treatment to its hull while you're at it.”
Paula didn't reply, she just threw up her hands and continued her inspection.
“Heading out Captain?” Ashley asked as she turned back to him.
He unslung a survival package hanging from the inside rear of his long coat and held it in his hand. It included emergency power cells, food, water, a compressed bed roll, an extra medical kit and several other critical items. “Just going for a ride, picking up a few wayward crew members.”
“I'd give my next leave to go along,” Ashley begged.
“Sorry Ash, I'm taking this one solo.”
“Good hunting sir,” Stephanie wished him. “Are you sure I can't convince you to take an escort?”
“What could go wrong?” Jake grinned wryly as he took the open lift down.
“Good hunting,” Ashley added.
The lift plate lowered Jake into one of the small airlocks reserved for pilots entering the pre-launch area. The gravity lessened by three quarters and as soon as he sealed his vacsuit the air was evacuated from the small compartment. The hatchway opened and he pushed off, bounding down the catwalk past empty sockets for fighters and small gunships. He stopped at the socket marked with his new call sign; Hitman and looked behind him in time to see his Uriel fighter being drawn along the ceiling. “We loaded her up like you requested.” Chief Angelo Vercelli told him over his communicator as the fighter was turned so its nose was pointed towards its socket and the punter launch doors.
Jake looked the bottom of the black and crimson fighter over carefully, pulled on the four engine pods he could reach and checked the cargo hatches along the bottom. “Two racks of scrambler missiles, a pair of turreted particle guns and two pulse cannons with a wormhole kit, extra fusion reactor and a rescue compartment,” Jake verified as he received the loadout information on his command and control unit. The fighter was turned around so he could inspect it from the top and the canopy opened.
“That's right. Still can't believe the Sol Defence folks have this listed as a fighter. She's a small gunship. How did you do on the qualifier, if you don't mind me asking sir?”
Jake couldn't help but chuckle as he double checked the nose armour. “You know you're supposed to check that when a pilot takes their first flight.”
“Aye, but being the Captain…”
“Well, keep this to yourself but I had to go through the primary qualifier twice. I failed the first time because I didn't bother taking the tutorials or practising in a sim. Thought just because I could fly the Samson and most other standard birds I'd be fine to pass in one of these.”
“That's a lesson most of the pilots are learning. Just goes to show, Sol Def does things differently.”
“And so do we,” Jake replied. Satisfied that his fighter was ready and in good order, he took hold of the handle in the cockpit's upper seat and pulled himself inside. “Looks like everything checks out.”
“I'd hope so, you should have seen the care people put into her when they found out that this was going to be your personal bird.”
Jake closed the canopy and settled into the seat, watching the systems come online and begin their own internal check. “I hope they work just as hard on every one. Last thing I want to see are pilots dying because someone missed a bolt.”
“Don't worry. Fabrication is doing better every day. If you can get us some heavy scrap we'll have a full squadron of varied role fighters in six weeks, maybe less if we can find more people to work down there.”
“I'm just glad we have more pilots than we do fighters. Keep them training together while I'm away, I want them to feel right at home by the time they sit in one of these for the first time.”
“Don't worry, I've dealt with green fighter jocks. Between me and everyone else pushing these people they'll be a fighting squadron like you've never seen before you know it.”
The automated calibration systems checked his body type, eye line and within moments the fighter was ready to react to his actions through the manual flight controls, eye movements and general body motions. Older fighters had pedals, extra hand controls and even neural links. While Sol System Defence combat vessels had all but the neural links, the control systems could be calibrated to respond to more subtle movements, and getting used to having that kind of control, to maintaining that kind of discipline took time and patience. While a pedal and flight stick movement may send the fighter rolling to the side, the turn of the pilot's head and shift of his shoulders could aim the guns, designate a missile target and get lesser utilized engine pods turned in the right direction for the next manoeuvre. At the same time the systems in the cockpit could also determine the difference between a head motion meant to change the focus of the weapons suite and one that was the result of a sneeze.
The cockpit formed to him and jacked into his vacsuit as the clamps lowered the fighter into its punter socket. Emergency ejection systems sealed onto his boots, waist and shoulders, also providing firm anchoring restraints so he wouldn't jostle around in the cockpit as he manoeuvred. He watched as the thick armoured launch doors in front of him were quickly drawn inside and moved to the left and right. The bright nebula outside bathed the nose of the fighter and the empty seat just below and in front in golden light. I wish Minh were here. He'd probably spend so much time in the cockpit that we'd never see him aboard Triton, but I'm sure he'd be in his glory.
Jake regained his focus and ran through the systems check as he had done in several tutorials and simulations over the weeks he had given the crew to train, knowing that at the very least Deck Chief Angelo Vercelli was listening. Other officers who had access to Flight Deck Control may have been eavesdropping and watching as well, and when he was sure everything was in order he contacted Flight Control. “Ready for launch.”
“Everything checks out fine on our end, Captain. Good hunting. Punting in five, four, three, two, one.”
As the fighter was ejected nose first out of the bottom of the ship, Jake was thankful for the inertial dampeners, keeping him from being crushed into his seat too hard. In under two seconds he was five kilometres away from the Triton and he gently turned his fighter so he could watch it shrink off into the distance. It was true, no simulation could prepare you for the rush of being forcibly ejected out of the bottom of the ship. The Triton was nothing more than a speck of metal glinting under the light of a thousand new stars in the nebula behind him.
He looked over the Navnet broadcast the Triton's flight deck was maintaining and verified he was clear of the four fighters patrolling nearby before checking other systems.
“Jake?” Alice said on his personal comm.
“Hi Alice,” he responded as he checked his course. It was preset to take him directly to Pandem, but double checking the math was a good habit to maintain.
“Are you all right?”
Another simple question that reaches deep, he thought to himself.
“I mean, you've put the ship in order, given us time to train and even gotten us organized enough to take on recruits without breaking a sweat. Triton is just about ready for anything, but are you okay?” Alice asked quietly.
In that moment, a split second of clarity that was as surprising as it was rare, he knew what to say. “I'm more myself every day. Now I just have to find out who that is.” He began the reaction inside the extra fusion reactor he had installed in the small optional component bay of the Uriel fighter.
“You know I'm here, right? I might not be installed in your C and C unit, but I'll never be too far off.”
“I know, thank you Alice. You've got a handle on the Triton?”
“A death grip. We'll be here when you get back.”
“I wouldn't feel the same with anyone else in the command chair,” he said through a smile. “Nothing like leaving family in charge. I'll see you soon.”
“Good hunting Jake,” she said before closing the channel.
Jacob Valance locked his course in and began pouring all of the main and secondary reactor's energy into the wormhole generator to create the most highly compressed passage through space possible. After a few seconds the energy was released into the space in front of the fighter and a wormhole entry point formed. Jake fired his engines and disappeared.
A Good Vantage Point
