Marko Kloos - Lines of Departure

The pilot takes a conservative ascent into orbit to save fuel, so we have thirty minutes to gaze at the scenery before we approach the Indianapolis in orbit. The orbital combat ship is built for stealth, and I don’t even see it until the pilot calls in docking clearance, and the Indy lights up her positional illumination. Twenty degrees off our port bow, a sleek ship appears out of nowhere, a vague indication of shape only illuminated by blinking station lights. As we draw nearer, I get my first look at the exterior of a Constitution-class OCS. It looks a little like a Lanky ship in miniature, all curves and streamlined surfaces, almost organic in appearance. The drop ship draws closer and positions itself underneath the Indy for the automated docking procedure, but even from just a hundred meters away, I can’t make out any exposed antennas or exhausts, just a series of openings near the tail end that look more like gills than thrust nozzles.

A few minutes later, the hull shudders slightly as the docking clamps attach to the Dragonfly and pull the drop ship up into the hangar of the Indianapolis . The status light on the loadmaster’s panel across the aisle turns from red to green, and the deployment light above the tail ramp follows suit. I shut off the sensor feed from the sensors and raise my visor.

“You can unbuckle,” I tell Dr. Stewart.

“Is there a procedure for stepping on a navy ship? Like, do I have to wipe my feet or something?”

“I’ll handle that,” I say, and return Dr. Stewart’s wry smile.

I get out of my seat and walk over to the loadmaster console to unlock the tail ramp. It comes open with the familiar soft hydraulic whining and reveals the small craft hangar of the Indianapolis beyond.

The Indy ’s hangar is claustrophobically tiny. As we walk down the laminate steel ramp of the Dragonfly, I look around and see that the drop ship fills out most of the available space. I see a refuel probe, an automated ordnance loader, and very little else aside from two deckhands stepping up to the ship to check for ordnance to secure. There’s a corporal in fleet fatigues with a PDW slung across his chest standing by the bulkhead in front of us. I stop at the end of the tail ramp and salute the NAC colors painted on the bulkhead above the corporal’s head.

“Permission to come aboard to report to the CO,” I say.

The corporal returns my salute. “Permission granted,” he says.

I step off the ramp and onto the deck, and Dr. Stewart follows me. “That is one small hangar,” I say to the corporal as we step up to the hatch. “Smallest one of any boat I’ve ever been on.”

“We don’t have an air/space complement except for the two stealth birds,” the corporal says. “And those have their own berths in the hull. Hangar’s just for ferry flights and visitors.”

“I see.” I look back over my shoulder and see that the wingtips of the Dragonfly are barely far enough away from the walls to let an ordnance cart squeeze past.

“Well, it’s not a carrier,” he says. The hatch in front of him opens silently. “But everything’s new and shiny. Best galley in the fleet, I guarantee it.”

Colonel Campbell stands at the tactical display with his arms folded when I enter the CIC with Dr. Stewart in tow. He turns around and briefly returns my salute before offering his hand.

“Welcome aboard, ma’am,” he says to Dr. Stewart. “You’re the first civilian on this ship since the shakedown cruise.”

“Thank you,” she replies. “Your ship is, uh, impressive.”

“Hardly,” he smiles. “We’re a glorified patrol boat. But thanks for the compliment.” He offers his hand to me as well, and I shake it.

“Mr. Grayson. Good to see you in one piece. Looks like you’ve been around since I last saw you.”

The last time I saw Colonel Campbell, he was a commander. They changed the service structure around us about a year after our first tiff with the Lankies on Capella Ac, where both the commander and I had a ringside seat to First Contact. The commander was the executive officer on my first navy assignment, and that ship ended up scattered all over Capella Ac as fine debris.

“Yes, sir,” I say. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone. Combat controller for the last three years.”

Colonel Campbell nods. “I knew you’d get bored as a console jockey. First time you reported to me on Versailles , you already had a drop badge and a Bronze Star on your smock.”

The CIC is a very intimate little affair, just like everything else on this ship. It has a half dozen people in it, less than a third the staff of a carrier’s nerve center. Indy ’s XO is a short and stocky sandy-haired woman who is introduced by Colonel Campbell as Major Renner. She returns my salute and shakes hands with Dr. Stewart.

“I guess we ought to get down to business,” I say. “Mind if I call home and then set up with your Neural Networks and Weapons guys?”

“She’s all yours,” Colonel Campbell says. “And I think I speak for everyone in our sorry little excuse for a fleet when I say ‘aim well.’ We have one round and no reloads.”

“Fallon, this is Grayson. I am set up on Indy and ready to kick off Doorknocker.”

Operation Doorknocker is our fancy term for the Freighter of Doom plan that is still under revision even as we are getting ready to send the Gary I. Gordon on her way. I never understood why the fleet likes to name non-martial ships like fleet tenders after ground-pounder war heroes, but I think that her namesake—a Medal of Honor winner who defended an air crew to the death in some police action in the pre-NAC days—would approve of us using his ship to try to score the first Lanky seed-ship kill in history.

“Grayson, Fallon. Understood. The ground crews are still filling the last batch of cargo pods with liquid refreshments. They should be on the way into orbit in about ninety.”

The colonial ground crews are doing their usual jobs of filling standard fleet cargo pods with water and launching them into orbit to be picked up for replenishment. The fleet uses water as reactor fuel and for the usual human uses, and New Svalbard is one of our intergalactic watering holes. Once they are in orbit, the freighter uses its orbital tugs to collect the pods and attach them to the pod clamps on the outside of the ship. The crew of the Gordon rigged a system that will allow us to remotely flood the interior spaces of the ship with the contents of one of those cargo pods, using transfer pumps and the ship’s own cargo redistribution lines in a highly irregular manner that required the overriding of every major and minor safety protocol. According to the science crew, the incompressible water will make the ship a more effective projectile and more resilient to withstand the four-g sustained acceleration needed to intercept the Lanky seed ship at its calculated turnover point.

“Bogey is now two mil kilometers from the Russian,” the tactical officer says behind me. I turn to watch the plot, where the red icon for the SRA cruiser and the orange one for the Lanky have almost merged on the holographic display.

“Uh-oh,” Colonel Campbell says. “Looks like the fleet has picked up our hard-shelled friends. Battle group is changing course and acceleration.”

On the plot, the icon cluster for the fleet task force—the Midway and her escorts—breaks away from the intercept trajectory it has been on for the last twelve hours. They’re a half AU away from New Svalbard, seventy-five million kilometers, and still two hundred million kilometers from the Russian and its Lanky pursuer.