Tommy Thorn Marked (12 page)

The Tarchein instructor looked around the room and switched off the large 3-D image. “Any questions?”

A light came on near the back of the class.

Kanoop did not bother to check the seating chart, as this light was always coming on. “Yes, Flight Lieutenant Bien,” he said, resignation evident in his voice.

“Sir, I’ve studied the glide ratio curves, and it looks like all you’re really going to be able to do is maybe control the crash.”

The commander switched off the flight lieutenant’s blue light. “That is unfortunately true. If you lose your grav-gen, you will crash—sooner than later.”

“So just to be clear, with a graviton generator failure, we’re basically, screwed?” Bien emphasized the word screwed.

Kanoop waited for the laughter to die down. “That is correct, Mr. Bien—you are screwed,” the commander responded nonchalantly and raised a hand to again quiet the laughter. “You do, after all, receive extra credits for flight duty, do you not?”

Bien smiled and nodded.

Kanoop continued, “now, I won’t take time today to review the ground control operation again…”

There was a collective sigh of relief from the class.

“As I said, I will not review it again here, but I implore you to review the procedures on your own before your trainer session.” He paused for the completion of a three-toned chime, alerting instructor and student alike to the period’s end. “Check your datapads for sim times, and I’ll meet you at the practice ramp tomorrow. I’m sure you’re all anxious to get some actual stick time.” The Tarchein did not try to conceal a sinister smile. “Class dismissed.”

The Device 11 Graviton Trainer, lovingly referred to as a bumper car
,
was used to give incoming pilot trainees operational practice time on nonflying, somewhat indestructible PT-207 facsimiles, at least in regards to the ground-handling characteristics and control inputs of the primary flight trainer. But these tricky little hover trainers represented much more than just a normal session of instruction. They were a rite of passage at the Slate, as the students in 1205 would soon find out.

Tommy waited in line behind an active barrier for a landing-pad assignment before he casually strolled out to his waiting bumper car and crew chief.

“Good morning,” the slightly overweight civil servant said, a smokeless energy stick dangling from her lower lip.

“Morning,” Tommy replied, handing the Razeierian his flight helmet and climbing into the device.

He was careful where he put his feet, but caution warnings notwithstanding, Tommy knew there was no ejection seat in the little roundish car-like thing. It was important, he guessed, that the little nonflying trainer did not encourage bad habits. Although one could not help but feel a little funny dressed in full fight gear, including helmet, while strapped into the tiny device, which looked much more like a thick cleaning disk than a flying machine.

“You all set, sir?” The chief had taken the e-stick out of her mouth to tighten and check his restraining straps.

Tommy nodded, lowered his helmet’s visor, cleared the rails, and closed his tinted bubble canopy, anxious to get the cooling effects of his conditioned air system online.

“You on comm, Tommy?” Gary asked, coming up on their prearranged private frequency.

Tommy looked at Gary, two landing pads over, and worked hard not to laugh out loud. He looked like a grown man enclosed in a tinted bowl, sitting on top of a child’s toy.

“I’ve got ya, Cruiser,” Tommy said, suppressing a chuckle.

“This is ridiculous.” It was Bo’s voice laughing over the comm.

“You just be careful over there,” Tommy joked as he activated his graviton generator and watched his thoroughly bored crew chief for a signal to go into hover. Red beacon lights began to flash on the forty-eight Device 11s as each student completed a checklist and applied power.

Finally, Tommy acknowledged the chief’s signal and watched as she hurriedly ran behind the safety of the barrier.
Funny
, he thought, and after confirming his panel’s green light, raised the skids, allowing the little trainer to hover.
Easy…
.

“Mudhen zero two seven,” the controller said over Tommy’s comm gear.

Tommy looked over at the elevated structure that housed the controller, who was seated behind large clear windows, and noticed a small crowd of students that had gathered in shaded seats at the base of the tower, all positioned well behind the barrier.

“Mudhen zero two seven,” Tommy said with a practiced slow draw.

“Zero two seven, you are cleared alpha, proceed tango four, on the green.”

Before Tommy could respond, the controller was on to the next pilot—er, driver. Tommy looked to his right at the wide yellow illuminated strip labeled Alpha. All he had to do was move the stick a little to the right. Tommy’s left thruster fired and sent him sliding over and past the yellow line by almost seven feet.

Okay, just a little left
… Adding a little left stick, Tommy sailed back over his pad and bounced off the barrier, which did two things. It yanked the nose of his trainer to the right—no longer parallel with Alpha, and it gave him a great view of Gray using an Alterian’s car to slow down.

He was sure, watching the Alterian’s Device 11 spin across several pads before slamming into another student, that it had not been intentional on Gary’s part.

Now just focus. It’s a little more sensitive than the sims
, he thought and applied just the slightest bit of a left twist to the control grip.

That’s it,
he thought, slowly moving back to a position even with the Alpha taxi line.

“Zero two seven, cleared alpha, to tango four.” The controller repeated his instructions, no doubt part of a training plan to further frustrate the students.

Tommy did not immediately answer, as he was recovering from the sight of a Device 11 whizzing by at a speed he did not think possible of the little hovering car.

“Zero two seven, do you copy?”

Tommy finally keyed his mic button but paused to brace himself for the impact of another runaway bumper car—SMASH!

Tommy’s training device spun and collided with yet another would-be pilot, wedging them both against the barrier. “Mudhen zero two seven copy,” he finally said in disgust while trying to ignore the belly laughs of the gathered bystanders, all very happy to be safely behind the protection of the electronic shielding.

For the next two hours, the students of training squadron 1205 bounced, spun, and slid out of control forward, backward, and sideways. Collisions were often and many times violent—so much so that more than once Tommy had tightened his harness, the same straps that at the start of this fiasco he doubted even needing.

But by the end of that first training period they were better. A few more sessions, and spectators in search of comic relief stopped showing up. Finally, after more than two weeks, the Mudhens could handle the Device 11 like an old pro.

We’re ready to go flying,
Tommy thought, climbing out of a bumper car for hopefully the last time.

Well, ready or not, Mr. Kanoop agreed, and the Hens were soon scheduled for their very first flights.

The PT-207 Firefly was designed, based on a rather broad Imperial requirement, to provide standardized entry-level flight training for a wide range of future pilots. Star Force at first had resisted any effort that would relax or in any way compromise their qualification efforts. They could not, and would not, alter a flight syllabus that had been developed over a hundred years to both screen and prepare officers for the rigors and demands of space flight. That being said, the political powers, based on the rising cost associated with training pilots and also, maybe most importantly, a deep-seated desire to regulate the certification process of commands from every system in the Empire, had decided on the development of the Firefly. The initial design, along with a complete package of training aids, had taken almost seven standard years to develop, but eventually the first aircraft reached the fleet, with full operational status achieved in 6915-06.

The Firefly is a straightforward design built around the tried-and-tested Genson TJ-16709 max-flow turbojet engine and a state-of-the art lightweight Landerflow graviton generator, with dual redundant power supplies. This reliable little trainer has by far the best safety record, based on flight hours, of any single engine aircraft in the Empire. Of course, this may be a direct result of the jet not having a requirement to fly into space. But nevertheless, although production has slowed, continued upgrades and modifications on the PT-207 should keep the Firefly on active service, training the best pilots in the galaxy for many years to come.

Tommy stepped through the hatch of the squadron’s hanger bay, into the relative coolness of a Razeier early morning, and began walking toward his assigned aircraft, helmet bag in hand. In spite of the required oh-dark-thirty briefing, he loved these early hops. There was a rare calmness to the Slate this time of day, along with just a hint of a breeze, both of which, he knew, would soon vanish under the relentless pressure of the day’s training schedule and the fierceness of Razeier’s sun.

Not that there wasn’t still plenty of activity. Many of the Bugs were surrounded by mechbots and ground crew personnel preparing the trainers for the day’s activities. But it was quiet work, and without the whine of turbojets or the frenzied pace of flight operations, one could hear the flapping of remove-before-flight flags, the occasional sound of a tool being dropped, and laughter as ground personnel exaggerated the events of their previous night’s exploits.

“Good morning, sir,” Tommy’s crew chief said, looking up from his datapad, apparently in the middle of an exchange of electronic information with a hovering mechbot. His face, partially covered by large dark glasses, was baked brown by long hours spent in the sun.

“Morning.” Tommy nodded and stopped to admire his jet.

Most would not consider the PT-207 to be an attractive aircraft. Its bulbous nose and long thin fuselage, perched on three squat landing skids, gave it an appearance that more resembled that of a tadpole than a modern sleek flight trainer. But in the last two weeks Tommy had accumulated almost fourteen hours in the Bug, and in that time he had grown to more than admire its functionality—a trait personified by its sharply angled cockpit, covered by a single, clear steel bubble canopy that extended past the pilot’s knees, and afforded an almost unobstructed view for both instructor and student. The side-by-side seating provided for a much more personalized approach to instruction, a feature that no doubt saved a lot of lives in the early going. And yes, Tommy had to admit, tightening the straps of his integrated harness before stepping into the cockpit, that even the Bug’s odd drooped looks had grown on him. The Firefly was really quite beautiful in its own way. It was, after all, a jet, and he had learned to love her.

“How’s she looking, chief?” Tommy’s primary instructor, First Lieutenant Pascelle, asked as he walked up to the bird.

The middle-aged, weather-beaten alien had just commanded the retraction of the last of the service lines, and he, along with a mechbot, had positioned himself to assist in the startup and launch activities.

“Looks real good, Lieutenant. How’s your boy?” The chief gave a knowing smile.

“We’ll find out here pretty soon, chief,” Pascelle said, moving around the Bug’s tapered nose.

Tommy was just finishing up with his harness when his instructor leaned into the right side of the open cockpit and rested his hand on the empty ejection seat. “How you feeling today, Thorn?” he asked.

“Fine, sir, ready to go,” Tommy said, pushing his helmet down over his ears.

“Good,” the instructor replied and looked up at the clear morning sky.

Tommy continued with the cockpit configuration, expecting the lieutenant to side into the seat next to him, but after several more minutes…

“Sir?” Tommy looked up from the jet’s acrylic panel at his instructor, who had straightened, his hand now propped against the opened canopy.