The battle at the Moons of Hell

commander reports landing zone sanitized and secure, clear to land.”

Michael heaved a sigh of relief.

“Roger that, Tac. Mother, command approved to autoland.” Michael itched to take manual control and do it himself, but he told himself not to be stupid. Although he knew he could hand fly the lander down, it would be a big mistake. Poor situational awareness, less than sixty seconds to run, and another sharp turn to port with the starboard engine out to boot. No, let Mother do it, he decided.

And a lovely job Mother did.

As a subdued rumble told everyone that the gear was going down, Mother extended the lander’s massive triple-slotted flaps, the fourteen-meter-wide strips of plasteel rammed out to bite hard into the air still ripping fast past the lander’s hull. Michael’s hands clenched unconsciously as Mother began the countdown to the pitch-up maneuver that so impressed the hearts, minds, and stomachs of new recruits. It wasn’t surprising that landers always had to be hosed out after recruit flights, Michael thought. There were few experiences like it. He knew that even experienced lander pilots like Hadley never enjoyed something that felt all wrong, and with one engine out, it was going to feel a whole lot worse.

With less than one kilometer to run and with Minnie’s speed decaying slowly, Mother pulled the lander sharply back onto her tail. The belly-mounted mass drivers, which were capable of holding a lightly loaded lander in the hover if need be, went to full power to fire mass directly ahead to kill the lander’s still-enormous residual kinetic energy. Walking the blowtorch, the maneuver was called, and for good reason, as Mother powered up Fusion B, with plumes of incandescently hot hypersonic water vapor ripping and blasting the earth as the lander slowed for landing, its nose angled up nearly vertically into the sky. Losing speed rapidly, Moaning Minnie came low across the threshold as Mother, neatly rotating the lander forward and down hard onto her gear, cut the power and popped the chute. The lander’s crew members were thrown hard up against their safety straps as Mother brought Minnie to a shuddering halt, titanium ceramic brakes nearly white-hot and howling in protest.

Minutes later, with the hypothetical marines safely delivered and on their way to wherever marines went when they finally got dirtside, the exercise was over and Minnie was taxiing slowly off Runway 28 Left. As the lander made its way to the stand, Michael rapidly completed the shutdown checklist with Mother. Finally, with a small screech of protest from heavily punished brakes, Mother brought Moaning Minnie to a stop, the lander bobbing its nose down for a moment as the nose gear absorbed the last remnants of her kinetic energy. The final shutdown items, and that was it. Exercise over. Survived. Thank God.

Michael commed CombatNet for the last time. “Thank you, team-helmets off. Free to disembark. A memorable trip, I think. See you all in the Dog and Duck at 20:00 tonight. First round is on me.”

“And the rest,” came a poorly disguised voice to general laughter. Aguilar, Michael thought.

“Command, Pax 1.”

Michael started as he realized that Bukenya had been with him all the time. Well, no better way to show who you believed in, he supposed.

“Sorry, sir, didn’t realize you were aboard.” Michael tried without success to hide his surprise.

“Wouldn’t have missed it for the world”-Bukenya laughed-“and well done. That looked very good from where I was sitting. And I’d forgotten how much I really enjoy assault landings with one engine out.”

“Thank you, sir. Pleased you had fun. I’ll catch up with you later.” Seconds later, Mother had popped Minnie’s accesses open and deployed the stairs. Michael unbuckled and climbed stiffly out of the command pilot’s chair. Then it struck him. Had he passed?

He turned to Hadley, already asking the question, but Hadley stopped him dead.

“Don’t ask. Somebody much more senior than me wants to tell you the good news, so don’t drop me in it by letting on that I’ve already told you. But you should know that if you had taken manual control from Mother for the final approach, I would have failed you. But you didn’t, and I know you won’t believe me, but that was the best decision you made all mission. Wait here till I call you down.” And with that Hadley was gone, space-suit boots clattering down the vertical ladder that led from the lander’s bridge down to the upper pax deck.

Ten long minutes later, Michael finally got the call, emerging from the long-suffering Moaning Minnie to give her hull an affectionate pat of thanks as she sat patiently clicking and clinking in the late evening sun, the residual heat of her reentry radiating off a blackened fuselage. As Michael came down the stairs, he could see Admiral Fielding standing patiently at the foot of the stairs, Hadley to one side and Bukenya to the other. Michael hurried down and came to attention as smartly as his combat space suit would allow.

“Junior Lieutenant Helfort reporting, sir,” he said, saluting stiffly. The admiral returned the salute and then took his hand and shook it until Michael thought it would fall off.

Finally releasing her grip, the admiral smiled. “Lieutenant Hadley has briefed me, and I have to say I agree with him. That was one of the best-flown assault landing missions by a junior pilot I have ever seen, Helfort, so my congratulations. Get some experience under your belt and you’ll be a certainty for combat flight school. Sorry about the loss of Fusion A and the cross-feed. You can blame me for that and not directing staff. Oh, and I also agree with Lieutenant Hadley on one other thing. If you had taken manual control for landing, he would have been right to fail you.

“But you didn’t, and that’s why you are going to be a good pilot. So well done, Helfort. You are back on track. Make damn sure you stay there.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“Well, that’s it. Good evening to you all. Where’s my damn car?” Fielding muttered as she turned and walked away across the apron.

Hadley looked at Michael for a moment. “You know why I was so pissed off at the beginning?” he asked.

“No, sir,” Michael replied.

“Because if I passed you and then you went and messed up, I would be remembered throughout the Fleet as the man who let Helfort off the hook. But then, I hadn’t ever flown with you, so how was I to know any better?”

There was nothing Michael could say.

“So you’ve passed. Full mission debrief at 08:00 tomorrow, and we’ll see what you didn’t do right. In the meantime, a long shower and change and then down to the Dog and Duck, I think.”

For his part, Michael could think of nothing he would like to do more.

Sunday, August 9, 2398, UD

Arcadia Spaceport, Ashakiran Planet

At long last, Michael thought as the down-shuttle thumped emphatically onto the Arcadia spaceport’s Runway 09 Left.

Since leaving the college Saturday morning, he had been traveling continuously without sleep, though traveling wasn’t the best way to describe what he’d been doing. Hanging around waiting would have been more like it. Michael had concluded long ago that it was one of the immutable laws of the cosmos that up-shuttles never connected with merships, which in turn never connected with down-shuttles.

The tension of the previous months had slowly begun to seep away, but he was more tired than he had ever been. But it was not just physical exhaustion; three years as a cadet had taught Michael how to cope with lack of sleep. No, it was more than that. It was almost as though he were just emerging from a prolonged coma and his body just didn’t want to play, all energy spent. Michael would have been happy to stay where he was and let the world move on without him. He closed his eyes and waited for the OK to disembark.

Five minutes later, the aerobridge was connected and the sparse complement of passengers began to disembark. Michael waited until almost everyone was off before he forced himself to his feet, grabbed his bag, and walked off the shuttle. His brief words of thanks to the cabin crew were the most he had spoken for days. Quickly through the retinal scan and DNA identity check, he collected his case and headed to check-in for the red-eye to Calvert, the enormous bulk of the spaceport echoing and empty as Sunday night wound its way to its usual dull conclusion.

Much to Michael’s surprise, he had passed out into an exhausted sleep the minute Mitrakis Emirates Flight