The silver fleet the com.., p.111
The Silver Fleet: The Complete Series, page 111
“So, just to recap. We’ll start the deceleration once we get to within half a million klicks of Tigris. At the same time Peter the Great leaves us in its wake and continues on to the planet itself. The aim is for them to hit orbit and stay there long enough to get Heimdall’s attention.”
“This all depends on what this Heimdall person is doing at the time,” she squinted at the camera. “Heimdall? I am saying this right, no?”
“Sounds good to me. Any questions so far,” he turned to Noah and Coach.
“Actually,” Noah said. “I do have a question: Elina. The accent? Is that Russian?”
He knew as soon as the words were out that he’d said the wrong thing.
Elina looked into the camera and snarled. “What is it with this boy, that he insults me, Tomas?”
Tomas leaned across and smacked Noah’s thigh as hard as he could – which was pretty hard.
“Say you’re sorry, Noah. I mean it: apologise.”
“What for?” he protested. “I just asked her a question, that’s all!”
“I am not Russian,” she said proudly. “I am Chechen. We kill Russians.”
“Okay great!” Noah said, rubbing his thigh. “Leastways, now we know.”
“Let’s get back to what we were talking about,” Coach prompted.
“Yeah. Where were we?” Tomas asked. “Oh, that’s right, Elina’s in orbit. So, what happens next?”
“This Heimdall he chase me, yes? I like a good chase.”
“But he’s going to be firing at you as well,” Noah said. “Isn’t that all part of the plan?”
“Don’t worry about this. I have been shot at before. My armour is good. It is built for this…”
She mimed repeatedly punching something while making a repetitive beating sound with her mouth.
“Pounding?” Tomas said. “Punching? I don’t know.”
“Pummelling,” Coach said with authority. “That there’s pummelling.”
“Pummelling?” Elina savoured the word. Found it to her liking. “Pummelling, yes. I like pummelling.”
“So, you draw them off and then, once you’ve disappeared over the horizon, we make our move.”
“Any idea what their atmosphere’s like?” Noah asked. “Cos that could be crucial.”
“I’ve had a look over the environmental read-outs,” Coach said. “It’s not ideal but it’s well within our operating parameters.”
“Yeah,” Tomas said. “They’re not paying us all this money because it’s going to be a cakewalk.”
“Money? Who said anything about money?”
They all looked guiltily at the screen. They’d somehow managed to forget about Elina.
Tomas leaned forward. “Not like we’re getting anything like what the job’s worth but, heay, we all have to do our bit. Elina. Babe. Tell me you’re getting something out of this.”
The cockpit was filled with the sound of laughter.
“Course I’m getting paid. You think I do this for nothing? I might be Chechen but I am not stupid.”
“Okay, okay,” Tomas continued, pointing to his data pad. “We move in, check everything’s safe and then drop into atmosphere. By this stage, all the ground-based stuff should be in place.”
“Yeah,” Coach said. “And if you believe that, I’ve got some land I’d like to sell you back on Laxx. Great place to build a holiday home.”
Tomas sat back, his fingers tapping against his chin. “Yeah, I was trying to think of a way round this one, but I keep getting stumped. We can’t afford to go into this one blind, there’s too much at stake. There’s only one thing for it, Noah, you’re going to have to take the Motar and scout the place out. Take a couple of guys with you just so we know what we’re getting into.”
“Take the Motar!” Noah couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That thing’s a death trap. Are you trying to get me killed?”
“I don’t want to get anyone getting killed. Which is why we need to check this out. Besides, the Motar is ideal for this kind of operation.”
“Yeah, ideal right up ‘til the point it faceplants into some cliff. That thing’s a nightmare to fly in atmosphere.”
“You saying you can’t handle it?”
“No, I’m not saying that,” Noah was frantically trying to backtrack. “I’m just saying, I’m going to have my hands full.”
“Yeah, well perhaps Elina can help you with that.”
The brothers studied one another.
“What I mean is,” Tomas went on. “You could hitch a ride with her. Once she arrives in orbit she can cut you loose and you can take it from there.”
He made it all sound so easy.
“That’s fine with me,” Elina chipped in.
Noah folded his arms across his chest. It sounded like a terrible idea, but anything that got him closer to Elina…
Tomas had the plan clear in his head now and wasn’t to be deflected from it. “Once you’re down there, it shouldn’t be too hard to find this camp of theirs. That’ll give you plenty of time to check out the lifting equipment their end. We turn up, activate the magnets and we’re good to go.”
“That’s if everything’s sorted, their end,” Coach said. “You know what the army’s like for screwing things up.”
“Which is why it’s a good job we’re dealing with the navy on this one. I hear what you’re saying, Coach. Only thing is: if they’re lying to us about the set-up they’ve got down there, then Noah’s going to be all over it. Which means we save ourselves a trip and don’t have to commit the Montezuma.”
“Yeah, but where does that leave me?”
“Don’t you worry about that. Elina’s got your back. She won’t leave you stranded.”
“Only,” Coach said, “if we don’t do the job, we don’t get paid.”
“Better that than we all get killed. Yeah, it all makes sense now. Noah goes in first, gives us the heads-up and then we take it from there.”
“So, what are you saying?” Coach said. “You’re leaving the final say-so up to the kid.”
“Guys, I’m nineteen. I’m hardly a kid.”
“Shush!” Tomas said. “The adults are talking. Yeah, you know what, Coach. I can’t believe I’m saying this but you’re right. Noah’s the man on this – he makes the final call. Everyone happy with that?”
He looked around but there were no objections.
Noah wanted to say something to Elina but before he could decide what, she’d already gone.
*
Noah still wasn’t sure whether his brother’s decision had been intended as an overwhelming vote of confidence or as a way of keeping him in-line.
It was a natural choice to put him in charge of flying the Motar, obviously. Everyone knew he was the best pilot out of everybody on board. Which was probably just as well, because the Motar had all the aerodynamic lift of a house brick. Sixty tons of dead weight takes an awful lot of clever flying.
The Motar was manufactured by a highly respected firm operating out of Muerto. They had a reputation for designing solid, durable pieces of hardware which would still be flying long after their respective warranties had expired. In fact, Noah’s dad, Tomas Snr, had always said that the reason he decided to bid on the Montezuma when she came up for auction was because the Motar was included in the sale.
And, initially, he’d been impressed with it. Nothing exceptional, just a solid work horse. But then they’d tried operating it in atmosphere. Tony Chu had had the piloting gig at the time. They tried to use it as part of a bridge demolition job on Topeka. Only problem was that Tony had nearly demolished the bridge all on his own by flying the little ship straight into it. He always contested that the on-board computer had been working against him.
Kept over-riding his decisions.
He said that the thing was a death trap and that he wouldn’t be flying it again.
Nobody wanted to make a fuss at the time. Tony was a good guy and clearly embarrassed by what had happened so nobody challenged him on it and eventually, Tony had got another job.
Nothing more was said but ever since then, Tomas Snr had only ever had them use the Motar in vacuum.
Until now.
The first part of the operation had gone smoothly enough with Noah squeezed into the tiny cockpit. He’d only flown in it once before and had been singularly unimpressed by the experience. The cockpit was cramped but serviceable enough with the usual dash arrangements. If anything, it was easier to operate precisely because space was so restricted – everything was within easy reach. Noah had safely detached the Motar from the Montezuma before lining himself up on Peter the Great. Normally, such a maneuver would be too dangerous even to contemplate. No one wanted to get caught in another ship’s backwash but on this occasion they’d arranged it so that the Peter the Great’s impressively grandiose engines would be silent. They wouldn’t be activated again until they came within sight of Tigris by which point they’d be deployed in the opposite direction, to facilitate the ship’s massive deceleration.
Warning signs flashed at Noah from every direction, just in case he’d fallen asleep at the helm. For him, the hardest part of this wasn’t going to be about getting the Motar into the other ship’s wake – it would be keeping her there.
If he made the mistake of straying offline by just a few metres, he’d leave the sweet spot he’d been occupying and be snatched away by the pervading torrents. By that time, he’d be thousands of kilometres off his mark with no way of getting back.
Turbulence rocked his ship as he attempted to complete his final banking maneuver. The controls began fighting against him, threatening to tear themselves out of his hands but somehow he managed to hold on. He just kept concentrating on the red reticule right in front of him. It was rigged to turn green when he was properly aligned.
“Hold on,” he said, more to himself than anyone.
The vibrations thrumming through the hull intensified to the point where his teeth started to vibrate.
For him, the whole universe began to recede into the background as his focus locked on the soft ellipse of the targeting software. All the while he was willing it to switch from red to green.
But then, everything seemed to settle, the disquieting tremors dying away to nothing as the proximity alarms suddenly stopped. Retrospectively, the targeting software switched, first to orange and then to green. He’d found the sweet spot directly behind the larger craft and for a few seconds he took the opportunity to compose himself.
Tomas had only finished fitting the harpoon equipment to the Motar the previously day so there had been no opportunity to test it. While technically there was no rush to get this right first time, Coach had been concerned that if the harpoon went awry and wasn’t retracted immediately it could itself get caught up in the bigger ship’s slipstream and pull them off course. Noah felt absolutely no pressure as he lined up his first shot. In fact, he expected to miss. What really concerned him was how soon he’d be able to reel the harpoon back in. Before he’d left, Tomas had told him that if Noah managed to pull off the shot within the first five attempts he’d be impressed.
Noah watched as the harpoon flew out towards its target, several hundreds of metres of cabling unspooling in its wake, a thin line of silver thread against the blackness of space.
And then it stopped, the cable swinging first one way and then the other.
At first, he panicked, thinking that they’d just run out of cable, in which case he was going to have to get much closer. But then the truth took hold.
The reason why there was no more cable unspooling was because it wasn’t needed.
He’d hit the bulls eye first time.
He could imagine the incredulity back on the Montezuma, the sheer sense of disbelief as the others slowly began to comprehend what he’d just accomplished.
But any sense of elation was short lived as the cable suddenly snapped tight. Instantly, the Motar was dragged off its perfect line, snapping him up against an invisible ceiling which began to violently buffet them up and down.
Before he’d realised what it was that he was doing, Noah began gunning the engines in a feverish bid to regain control.
It was going to be like that all the way to Tigris, he realised. There would be no opportunity to relax now, he was going to have to ride this one out until they were finally able to detach themselves.
He’s only been at it a short while and already he felt drained. It was the process of constant realignment which was most troubling because as soon he thought he’d got a handle on it, the cable would jink again and he’d be thrown offline once more. In the end, he simply zoned out, concentrating on the rear of the Peter the Great which loomed up in front of him, trusting his instincts to keep them level.
His eyes drifted over the contours of her armor plating. The main sections, making up the fabric of the original design, seemed solid enough but there had also been a lot of additional work done along the way. He could see were rough-hewn, mismatched sections butted up against smoother more finished plates of armor. There were plenty of examples of this kind of work when you got up close, much more than he would have expected to find on a simple freighter.
But then he started to realise that the ship wasn’t as smooth and blemish free as she appeared from a distance. Wherever he looked there was fresh evidence of combat damage and in some parts, the hull had been peppered with some kind of explosive ordnance. One whole section was a completely different color to the rest of the livery, ablated matt black in what could only have come about as a result of a substantial detonation going off at close range.
Then as his eyes roamed along the ship’s lateral length he could just make out some of the ships defensive systems. There were the usual point defence lasers, as was to be expected but there were other subtler signs of more offensive weaponry. The various contoured panels which signalled the location of retracted gun turrets and there, slung beneath the ship’s fuselage, effectively hiding in plain sight, were two missile pods each capable of holding sixteen missiles apiece.
They had been carefully camouflaged to resemble simple engine manifolds but from his peculiar vantage point, their true purpose could not have been clearer.
A regular freighter, even one of this size, could have no possible use for such armaments normally. No, the Peter the Great was anything but a normal freighter but then, if that were true, what did that tell him about the true nature of her captain?
*
By the time it came to detach the cable and leave the Peter the Great behind, Noah was glad to have the Motar back under his control. Even so, he had to wait until they were completely clear of the other ship’s backwash, before he could put her into a tight roll and start to make his way towards the planet’s surface.
As the distance between the two ships increased, Noah took advantage of the opportunity to examine the other ship’s hull from a different angle. At first, he couldn’t pick out any real detail and then he got a flash of what looked like a pair of ion cannons suspended along the ship’s under belly.
The suggestion that this was just another battered freighter wending its weary way between the stars was nothing short of a clever deception. Anyone who approached her in the hope of exploiting a perceived soft target was going to be in for a shock.
But then, perhaps that was the plan?
Noah cut the Motar’s engine and allowed the ship simply to drift, easing it towards the planet’s silvery curve.
“Tigris Base Whisky Zero Tango, this is Springer Two Zero, are you receiving me? Over.”
But there was nothing on the other end, only static.
He tried three more times, each time receiving the same response.
He decided he’d better check in with the Montezuma.
“I’m not picking up anything from planetside,” he said.
Coach was on comms and he was all business. “Any chance the Peter the Great might be unintentionally blocking your signal?”
“No, I already considered that. We’re well clear. Should I just keep trying?”
“Perhaps you ought to wait until you’ve entered atmosphere.”
“Roger that, Montezuma. Don’t you think it’s odd that they’ve not been able to pick us up?”
“Not really. They’re a small-scale scientific base, after all. Probably over reliant on their satellite comms before they got taken out.”
“Fair point. But how are they proposing to co-ordinate a major lifting operation when they haven’t got the comms to back it up.”
There was a burst of static while Coach considered this.
“I don’t know the answer to that but then there’s a lot about this which doesn’t make sense. You’re just going to have to play it by ear for the time being.”
“Yeah, Roger that. Springer Two Zero, out.”
He was out of radio contact for twelve minutes as the fires of atmosphere danced across the diamond glass windscreen. As they gradually died away, he found himself looking out over a largely unsullied planet. It was a pristine clean world with sparkling blue oceans and pure white mountain ranges. He could see what the attraction had been for the scientists. Finally able to study a land unblemished by the mark of man, it was an opportunity they could only have dreamed about before the access granted to them by the gates. Heady stuff, indeed. Though the lack of adequate bar rooms might well queer the pitch as far as Noah was concerned.
Personally, Noah wasn’t so sure. They’d have automated base units down there so they’d have the basics: power, heat and hydroponics, but not much else. He was too fond of his own comforts and, to his way of thinking, if there was nowhere to go for a few beers on a Saturday night, then what was the point?
Abruptly, Noah’s viewpoint changed as the Motar seemed suddenly to drop out from under him. They were swinging wildly from side to side, the sense of falling quickly replaced by one of complete weightlessness. If he hadn’t been securely strapped in he’d have found himself slammed up against the canopy by now. Noah swore as the stick tried to wrench itself out of his hands. He’d never experienced anything like it outside of a complete systems malfunction. And yet everything on the dashboard appeared to be working normally.
