Black Dawn (23 page)

Morning, however brought them all back to reality.
The BlackFleet fighter corps now found itself in the classroom.
A tough classroom. The Major threw a barrage of strategies, simulations, exercises, pop quizzes, and training vids at them for 12 hours
each day. The entire corps felt as if their brains would burst, if called
upon to recite one more stratagem, or to memorize one more set of attack codes. No one more so than the squadron commanders, who had
to know everything that the pilots beneath them were being trained in,
plus all the command instruction that the Major had singled out for
them. Anthony felt his initial enthusiasm waning to a low ebb. Then
came this morning.
“I’m gonna tear Harper apart,” the Major blared during the
morning office briefing with the three of them. “She knows how tight
this training schedule is. She was supposed to be here yesterday with
those simulators.”
“I thought the techs would have been done adapting and programming them by now,” Cheny said. “What could have happened?”
“I don’t have any idea,” Michaels shot back. “But we’re gonna have to step up the schedule on actual flying time. I want the techs
to have the
Talon
s ready to fly by 1000. We’ll have to run our initial
drills with actual equipment. She’d better have a damn good excuse
when she gets here...”
Chen Marcus spoke up. “What if there’s more to it, Major?
Some significant problem with the equipment, or an emergency call for
the ‘Fleet?”
Michaels appeared to think about that for maybe a second before dismissing it. “More than likely some snafu back at the ‘Fleet.
They could have commed to tell us though.” He snorted. “That’s headquarters for you. I’ll call and find out what’s wrong. In the meantime, you’re dismissed.
Go and get your crews ready to fly. We’ll see if they’ve been paying
attention.”

They left the office and split off to get their separate section
crews ready. For Smith’s part, not even Capt. Marcus’ grandstanding
with the Major---- ‘what if there’s more to it’ indeed---could dampen
the sudden lift in his mood. The only thought on the Lieutenant’s
mind was that he could finally climb back into the cockpit of his bird,
and do some real flying. He understood the need for class work, and
preparation, but with some of the necessary groundwork laid, they
were about to get down to what he’d come here for.

The next two hours saw a frantic scrambling about; getting
their gear, doing final inspections in conjunction with the support crew
members they’d brought along, powering up, loading their personal
files and the Major’s instructions onto the shipboard systems.

Smith sat with the rest of his section. He mentally smiled with
pride at his crew, designated as Onyx Flight. The lieutenant had been
working with them all week, going over the particulars of their tactical
strategies. He felt that they were ready. They’d shown great ability,
and Smith had encouraged them at every turn. All that remained was
to see how well they’d taken in the huge amount of information.

They began in the morning, flying formation approach tactics,
disengagement maneuvers, and cooperating as a total cohesive unit in
some of the new basic flight procedures. The Major had wanted to get
a feel for how much improvement there had been in this area, and this
was a way to evaluate their learning safely and easily. Smith’s division slid into and out of formation, performing the basic moves with
ease. He watched as Danielle Cheny’s group, and Chen Marcus’ group
also performed these maneuvers with equal ease. No challenge there
for any of them. Good. Now they’d get down to business.

The fighter corps brought their birds back to base for servicing
and rechecking of systems while the men and women who’d flown
them went to grab a bite while they could. On the way to the commissary, Smith walked together with Captain Cheny. He was looking
forward to the afternoon’s exercise, and adrenaline surged.

“Respectfully speaking ma’am,”
Smith said to her, “I hope
you’ve got your E-flares and signal buoy ready for when I splash you
in the exercise this afternoon.”

“
You seem mighty sure about this,
Lieutenant
.” Cheny replied. “I don’t think that you should count me out just yet.”
“Begging the Captain’s pardon; not counting you out, ma’am.
I just know that my section is ready. To splash you, that is.”
Cheny laughed, then looked at him once again. “You’re completely serious, aren’t you, Smith?”
“Yes ma’am, that’s the truth.”
“We’ll see, Lieutenant Smith, we’ll see.”
“Yes, ma’am, we sure will.”

Butler stopped at the door of the
Raven’s
Sick Bay and viewed
the scene before him. Commodore Lamont was back on the flagship
but had not been released for duty by Ceal Byars. You would never
know it from the activity.

Back in uniform, Lamont had set up a secondary Int/Sec office
right in one of the Sick Bay observation cubicles. It and Vennefron
were sitting side by side scanning old records of all the attacks they
had gathered information about. Except for senior officers, Vennefron
was the only person Byars had let in so far. She would not be thrilled
with the news he was about to report.

“
Skipper,” he opened. When Coy looked up he snapped off a
salute in his best Gary Michaels imitation. Lamont only raised an
amused eyebrow as it returned the salute, but did not mention it. “Sir,
we sent Shuttle Two off with equipment for the training pilots a week
ago. We’ve had normal stat reports from them every day. Until now.”

Coy frowned and Vennefron looked up from his study in concern.
Butler handed over a data sheet. “We’ve tried to initiate contact...”
“And didn’t get a reply?” Lamont guessed.
“Right. And to top it off we get a request from Michaels just a
few minutes ago wondering where his shipment is.”
Coy cocked its head at the names on the report. “The JP
is…Lynn Harper. I don’t know her.”
“Ah, no, she’s one of our recent recruits. A fairly new pilot,
but a good one. There’s no reason to think she couldn’t handle it –
unless something external happened.”
Vennefron waved a hand at the information they had been
studying. “You don’t think…”
Ken and Coy exchanged a serious look.
“Not
my
people,” Coy stated, coldly.
Ken nodded understanding. “I’ll get a hold of Michaels.
They’ll have to handle most of it from their end.”
Coy raised its wrist com to its face. “Lamont to Bon.”
“Bon here. You don’t know how great that sounded, Commodore.” They could hear his smile even over the tiny speaker.
“Meet me in my Sick Bay ‘office’ immediately. It’s not great.
We need to get the Fleet moving.”
The levity evaporated from his voice. “On my way.”

“So what is up that guy’s butt, anyway?”
Sweggert asked as he
flopped down onto the seat in the commissary for whatever meal this
was.

“
You can only mean Smith,” McKinney said around a mouthful.
“Oh please,” Pierce set her tray down and joined them just in
time to hear the name. “I want to eat without indigestion.” She shook
her head. “And to think I thought he was kinda cute.”
The other pilots stopped mid bite and stared at her. She may be
the best fighter there, in and out of a
Talon
, but Andrea Pierce would
never be “one of the guys.”
Randy decided it was safer just to let it go. “I’m serious. I
would really like to know what the problem is. If we were lousy pilots
and holding them back or something that would be one thing, but
we’re not. We do bad and he treats us like dirt. We do good and he
treats us like worse dirt.” He stopped his complaints only long enough
to take a bite and swallow it. “It didn’t use to be like this in the Fleet.
Everybody was on the same side. If the Skipper…”
“That’s enough, Sweggert.” All three pilots turned to see Capt.
Marcus standing behind them. “We are one Fleet. But we are three
squads. Competition is supposed to improve your edge – not have you
whining like infants.”
“Yeah, but Cap…”
Whatever argument Sweggert was about to marshal was lost as
everyone’s screamer went off on their wrist com cutting short their
dinner as well as their conversation. “Michaels to all personnel. To the
briefing room!” the major’s voice came over the units. “Repeat: all
BlackFleet personnel to the briefing room immediately!”
Randy stood up and dropped his utensil onto his tray with a
clatter. “Nothin’ like a good meal…”

Michaels stood at parade rest at the head of the room, as everyone hurriedly filed in. If anyone thought that this was a drill or
some simulated exercise, the severe look on the Major’s face immediately told a different story. He counted heads, and began as soon as the
last person apologetically ran in and found a seat. He was curt and to
the point.

“
Pieta was supposed to arrive yesterday with the last flight
tech and a set of simulators for training. According to the Fleet, they
left on schedule. Somewhere between there and here, they disappeared.”

He waited while a buzz of reaction quickly circled the room.
Then, he switched on a holo map. “The Fleet has been trying to contact them with no success. This was their last known position,” he said
indicating a point on the map. “They emerged safely from the transit
point, which, as you know, is out beyond the edge of the Avalon system.
But they were lost somehow, before arriving here.

“So, we’re on SAR. It’s for real, boys and
girls, because
there’s trouble of some kind out there. And we’re going to have to
find out what it is,
and
find our missing crew. The Fleet is coming, but
they’re still days away. It’s up to us.

“
Your section commanders will brief you on your assigned
search areas---just as soon as I brief
them.
But I want the crews on the
field now, seeing to last-minute prep.
Dismissed.”

It was organized chaos several minutes later as pilots, gunners
and crew raced around the field. Pilots and gunners had suited up, and
were now running to take their places in the waiting Talons.

Cheny, Smith and Marcus were each detailing the search coordinates to their sections as they all began climbing into their cockpits.
Each of the squadrons lifted off in turn, clawing their way through the
atmosphere, until they had left the planet far behind.

Racing through space, the three squadrons remained in their
practiced formations almost without thought. When they reached the
general coordinates however, the
Talons
peeled off by squadron to
conduct the search.

Most of the pilots were searching their assigned areas in empty
space between the transit point outside the system, and the core world
of Avalon. They were looking for scattered debris, energy signatures,
anything that might explain what had happened to their missing shuttle.

Danielle Cheny’s Obsidian squadron had been given a different assignment, at the other side of the outer system.
They traveled for quite some distance, before shutting down all
power, except for minimal life support. The four tiny ships began
coasting silently through space toward a particular target. Their course
would bring them easily within low-power scanning range of the small
mining planet of Kendrick, on the outer edge of the system. They
would simply scan the planet as they floated past, without being picked
up on sensors themselves. Then they would loop back, and rendezvous
with the rest of their squadron. After another long hour of relative
silence, even within the cockpit, Cheny spoke.”Here’s where we see
whether or not the rest of the patrols got the short end of the stick or
we did. We’re in close enough,” she said to her gunner.

“
Scanners on receive-only--now. Let’s just hope that this
works and that no one spots us.” The
Talon
squad approached the
planet, looped around in a slingshot trajectory, and within several
minutes, were on their way, having scanned the entire surface. Only
when they were well outside of detection range of Kendrick, did they
light off their drives.

Michaels closed the hatch on the remaining shuttle within one
of the hangars on the field. The last of the twenty–four pilots and gunners had just walked into it ahead of him. Now all of them watched as
he stood just within the hatchway. Then they flinched together as he
angrily slammed his fist against a bulkhead.

“
Pirates.” Michaels said simply. He watched as heads nodded
in sudden understanding. He watched also as his own anger was swiftly duplicated around the cramped shuttle.

“I’ve had
Vennefron check,” he told them, waving a minicomp he held in his other hand for emphasis. “There have been four
other unexplained disappearances reported in this system in the last
several months. On the chance that our missing crew might be one of
those
unexplained
missing, I had Captain Cheny check out a small
planet on the other side of the system from where our shuttle vanished.
If it was pirates, they’d have to be operating from a base somewhere,
and that’s a likely area.

“
We were looking for energy signatures from anything other
than the established mining facilities on Kendrick. She found seven.
The readings eliminated five of them. They were just too small for
what we’re looking for.
“But one of the remaining two showed a ship landing as Cheny’s group overflew, and then being suddenly obscured from the scan,
as if hidden under a shielded bunker. My money’s on this one.
The
government here may know something, and they may not. They have
done some low-level investigating of the other disappearances, but haven’t turned up anything. Just in case there is a problem though, I
thought we’d keep this search, and its results to ourselves. I want to
keep the rescue to
ourselves, too. That’s the reason for our private little conversation
here”. Michaels then turned to Chen Marcus. “I don’t believe that an
air assault is the best option here. We’re talking about a covert op, and
that means you and the Elite Forces, Captain. We need to get in there
quickly and get our people out. I’m turning the planning for this over
to you.”