The morning air along the banks of the pond was something that had to be experienced to be believed. It made men think of simpler times and how thrilling it would be to make trips back and forth to town for things like feed and oil for the lamp. For some, that was paradise considered to more urgent concerns like enemies with reality-altering weapons and the safety of space fleets and their crews.
Leaves crunched underfoot. The sky was blue enough to make a romantic’s heart break. Only a few clouds were visible along the horizon. It was going to be a beautiful day, and tomorrow was likely to be even better. It was more than a little frightening how quickly one imagined they could acclimate to such an idyllic place. It was disconcerting how rapidly one might become unconcerned with war and strife billions of miles away despite the call of duty and the certitude of courage.
Sitting along the banks of the river were three young boys. By the looks of them they were almost as bored as the ducks a few yards from shore. One plunked small rocks into the water in a meager attempt to annoy the web-footed fowl while the others sat with their chins resting in their hands. Next to them was an instantly recognizable model aircraft. It was a wooden replica of an early 20th century fighter. It was even decorated with the Prussian Iron Cross.
“Not going to be much of a fishing trip with no poles or bait.”
The boys all looked up as if startled out of plans to knock over a grocery store.
“Fishing is boring,” one of them said, making a point of letting his chin fall right back into his hands.
“Did you paint that plane yourself?”
“I made it from a kit,” the fair-haired boy said. “It came with stickers for all the parts, but it won’t fly right. Stupid kit makers said it would, but it’s broken and the radio doesn’t even work.” The expressions on their faces didn’t change.
Jason Hunter knelt by the model and picked it up. Its wing span was roughly two-feet. It felt light enough for its size. He turned the model over. The fixed landing gear were solidly attached. The wheels even turned. By now all the boys were watching, curious to see if the man knew why their plane couldn’t get off the ground. One thing Jason noticed that was strange was the fact the underside of the plane’s wings seemed to be sanded off to a flat finish. He looked more closely and saw the seams in the material at the wings’ edges. The model was constructed out of a sturdy but light composite with a texture similar to balsa wood, but smoother and coated with a sealant under the colorful paint.
“She’s a D-type Albatros,” Jason said as he spun the propeller. The boys looked at him as if he had just announced he was a giraffe. “Beautiful aircraft. Formidable in her time.”
“How do you know what kind of plane it is?”
“Ancient fighter aircraft are a hobby of mine. I used to have a model of this ship’s twin in my dorm at the Academy. This is one of the planes flown by the Red Baron.”
By now Hunter had the undivided attention of the little model plane’s ground crew. “Red Baron?”
“You’ve never heard the story?” Hunter asked. All three shook their heads. “Manfred von Richthofen. One of the deadliest men ever to take flight. He shot down more than 80 enemy pilots. He flew the Fokker Dr1 Triplane and this one too. He was a German pilot long ago in a conflict called World War One.”
The boys all had astonished expressions. It was as if they had never heard the story of a war before, or of a man who had fought in one. It made sense. Epsilon Gamma was several light years from any system any civilized star-faring civilization would consider worth fighting over. The term “backwater” was likely to appear in any description of the two habitable planets orbiting the unremarkable yellow star at its center. Any army that won Epsilon Gamma was as likely to give it back as anything else.
“Did you know him?” one of the boys asked.
“I’ve read about him,” Hunter replied. “He lived a long time before I was born. But everyone still knows his name. His was the legend of the Red Baron. His Fokker Triplane was painted all red with black crosses on the wings and tail. If you were a British or a French pilot and you saw that unmistakable red flash in the sky, you knew you were in for the fight of a lifetime.”
By now their mouths were hanging open. One might have credibly thought they were hypnotized.
“Does the engine run?” Jason asked.
The fair-haired boy nodded.
“Well then let’s see what seems to be the problem!” Jason stood, holding the model. “Where’s a good wide flat surface we can use for a runway?”
The rocks and ducks were forgotten. The three boys were now totally focused on reclaiming air superiority over the pond. They ran to the nearby road, which was the site of their last failed attempt to get airborne. The fair-haired boy retrieved the radio control unit for the plane. Jason quickly determined both units were battery-powered. As with most toys the electronics were dramatically limited. He knelt by the side of the road and broke out his universal. In moments, the circuit boards of both controller and plane had been exposed.
“See this?” Jason indicated an orange connection controller on the radio. “This is a signal dampener. It keeps your controller from fouling up the village communications net. But since we’re two miles from town, and since you’re going to promise me you won’t fly this aircraft any closer to town, we’re going to disable it for now. That will give you an extra couple hundred yards of range and save you some battery power while we’re at it.”
The boys crowded around as if they were watching tiny dinosaurs battle in a model arena.
“This is the digital signal processor, and this is the power supply. Everything looks like it’s connected properly. Just one problem to fix. See this?” Jason indicated the underside of the plane’s wings. “This is packing material.” He snapped the two foam pieces loose revealing a flat surface that was no longer hidden by the foam. “For an aircraft to fly, it needs lift. That means the air passing over the wing has to move more slowly than the air passing under it. That pulls the plane up into the sky. If there’s something under the wing, that creates drag and the plane doesn’t get any lift. That’s why it wouldn’t fly before.” Jason held the aircraft level. “See the shape? How the upper surface of the wing is curved and the lower surface is flat? The curved surface makes the air move slower than the air beneath.”
By the looks on their faces, one could have credibly concluded Jason Hunter had just awarded them one of the keys to the universe. The captain could see the gears turning in three young heads. He knew they wouldn’t be able to wait long to see their plane in action, so he re-assembled the circuit board covers for both units, made sure they had power and set the Albatros down on the dusty road. It looked rather frail just sitting there by itself, but the captain knew it wouldn’t be still for long. He handed the radio to the fair-haired boy. The other two looked like they were about to take flight themselves. Their gazes snapped back and forth from plane to radio as they performed their final flight checks. The fair haired boy looked up at Jason, his expression somewhere between asking permission and gratitude. Jason nodded.
“Contact!” he barked. The boy smiled.
The radio controller lit up as the tiny throttle spun the plane’s propeller up to speed. It started rolling down the road with the other two boys running along either side. For a moment, it appeared the little model was going to rattle itself to pieces bumping and banging into rocks, pieces of wood and other debris. Finally it hopped a good six feet before bouncing off the road and taking flight. The two boys chasing it stopped and threw their hands up, cheering as the Albatros D-Type soared into the sky.
Even the joy at Kitty Hawk would have paled in comparison.
“Let’s have a slow circle of the battlefield, pilot,” Jason said, mostly for show. He folded his arms in his best “officer inspection” pose. The fair-haired boy guided the controls and his plane rolled left. It began a leisurely course arc back towards its makeshift runway with its tiny engine buzzing and wheezing. Jason and the boy turned to watch as it flew overhead and banked left again, flying out over the nearby riverbank and two cows who couldn’t have cared less. Hunter put his hand up over his eyes to keep sight of the craft as it flew past its first course again.
“You are cleared to land, pilot.”
The boy expertly guided the tiny plane down towards the same road, this time in the opposite direction. The other boys ran as it flew by and finally touched down. In a few yards it rolled to a stop. The fair-haired boy ran ahead. Jason chose to stroll. The energy level in the amateur flight crew was a rather stark contrast to their demeanor fifteen minutes earlier. In the distance, Jason could see a woman making her way through the tall grass. Further in the distance was a homestead of some kind. A fence separated a yard from the rest of the trees around the pond. The faint outline of eaves and a house were visible beyond the leaves and branches.
“Nick! Nick! Come in for breakfast now!” The tone in her voice was unmistakably a mom’s. Her apron and dishtowel completed the image. She didn’t linger for an answer. The message had been delivered and the morning’s aerial adventures would have to be postponed. Nick, who Jason surmised was the fair-haired leader of the Epsilon Gamma historical aircraft society, ran up to the captain and held a hand over his eyes to shield them from the morning glare.
“Come to breakfast at my house. You have to meet my uncle and tell him about the Red Heron!”
Jason had to admit he was more than a little hungry and it had been a considerable interval since he had been served a home-cooked breakfast on a planet’s surface.
“That sounds great.” He guided the boy by the shoulder and walked along with his new adopted students towards the fence and gate. The captain had to admit he also couldn’t wait to hear the story of the Red Heron.
He also had to admit he was of two minds on this particular morning. One was headed to breakfast. The other was a great distance away, in a torn and bleeding star system called Bayone, where his fellow officers and crew mates had fought for the lives of thousands of civilians and to preserve their ability to protect the Core Alliance from a man whose motives were still as obscure and dangerous as ever.
The captain of the starship Argent and the flag of a powerful military force called Strike Fleet Perseus had performed a daring vanishing act. As a student of war, Jason Hunter was well aware all military strategies ultimately depended on deception in some form. In this particular case, they also depended on misdirection.
He had always known this particular gambit would require him to be patient and leave the details to the highly trained officers he had so often relied on for life and limb. That didn’t make it any easier. He had to avoid the battlefield as urgently as he wanted to reclaim it. The future success of the starship Argent depended on Captain Hunter executing a plan that was sure to have traumatized half his crew and endangered the other half.
It was a gamble: The kind of thing Hunter specialized in. It was what he had built an entire career out of. Battleship captains were rarely risk-takers, and they most certainly weren’t brash hair-on-fire warriors with larger than life images and the obligations they demanded. Capital ships were simply too expensive and too valuable to use as spearpoints.
An officer assigned to command a ship like Argent was traditionally a heavily armed mayor as opposed to an army’s high champion. Line captains didn’t roar into the breach and they certainly didn’t lead from the front. Hunter broke all those rules and then some. The admirals who had put him in the center chair aboard the fleet’s newest strike battleship were well aware of his propensity for what some rivals referred to as (expletive) heroics. They wanted that brand of fighting to go with the brand of hardware Argent brought to the party. The prudent faction at Skywatch Command had risked everything to overcome anti-alarmist obstructionism. There was no sense in being meek about betting heavily on the outcome. Jason Hunter was that bet.
He was also the only captain who would even dream of what he was attempting. At the same time he was the only captain likely to pull it off. If he succeeded, he would have a gargantuan tactical advantage at the time of his choosing. If he failed, an irradiated planet and half a billion casualties would become an eternal monument to a man who was too clever by half.
But this gambit wasn’t a simple act of misdirection. Hunter was also gambling on the personalities of his fellow pilots. The Bandit Jacks were an example of the rare moment when five superstars join forces and somehow manage to synthesize their egos and hunger for the spotlight. Some compared them to great sports teams of the past. In football, for example, they often used the example of a future Hall of Fame quarterback teaming up with a future Hall of Fame receiver. Neither player could achieve his goal without the other, so they were forced, in a manner of speaking, to cooperate, bury their attitudes and become part of something bigger than either one of them.
That was what many surmised had happened to the Jacks. Hunter rocketed through his promotions. He was one of only about 4% of the members of each Academy class that graduated to a commission as a junior grade lieutenant instead of an ensign. In Hunter’s case, his graduation included an invitation to Flight School largely because of his aptitude for the math and his reputation as a leader among his classmates. The promotion was his scholarship, and he proved in rapid fashion it was well deserved. In less than a year, he was on the short list for lieutenant and six months after that, he was on an even shorter list for a command rank.
Commander Doverly was right behind him with every step. Her early graduation from the Academy at age 19 earned her a degree in aerospace medicine which she parlayed into the space military equivalent of an M.D. 18 months later. She applied to flight school, set records in some of the entrance tests and lost a bid to replace Jason Hunter as a student squadron leader by half a decimal point. When he turned around and recruited her for his squadron instead of letting her lead a different team, it sent shockwaves through the entire class. Doverly accepted and became the number two pilot in what would eventually come to be known as the greatest combat squadron in Skywatch history.
Of all his fellow officers, Jason knew it would be Annora who would refuse to accept the pat answer. He had observed her relentless nature on so many occasions it was hard to keep them all straight. He was there when she helped a first-time mom overcome 19 hours of labor to deliver twins. He was there when the young Lieutenant Doverly discovered a flaw in the upgraded fuel system of the first generation Yellowjacket fighters at the Academy Air and Space Show. She earned a commendation from a vice admiral for that particular act, since it saved the lives of eight of her fellow pilots.
Everyone told her she was wrong. The technicians and engineers tried to tell her to mind her own business, and that doctors had no place on the flight line in the first place. But she didn’t give up, and Hunter was there to see every moment of it. The night before, she arrived at the receiving line for the Officers’ Ball looking like a monarch’s daughter. She wore a glittering off-the-shoulder gown and wore her auburn hair in delicate curls down her back. Her grandmother’s silver necklace completed a stunning ensemble. She was the talk of the night, and Jason had the honor of dancing with her not once, but twice. The next morning, she was nose-to-nose with a chief petty officer, ATMAS in one hand and a wrench in the other. Jason was almost certain he had found the perfect woman on that day, but he was more than certain he had found his combat wing.
She was going to be told what everyone thought had happened over Bayone Three. Competent officers were going to explain it to her in detail. They might even throw in a few pie charts and spreadsheets. And when it was all over, Jason Hunter knew his number two pilot was going to respond with the profane version of “nonsense” and set out in search for the real answer. When she found it, the captain was going to have all the pieces in place to execute his strategy. He was going to catch his enemy where they least expected. Whatever disappeared through the mysterious doorway at Raleo had to be connected to the buildup of hostilities between the Sarn and the Alliance. If Hunter had to follow his unidentified enemy through that doorway, so be it.
His confidence in his wing pilot was his anchor. As it turned out, he only needed a pair of Jacks to survive Atlantis. That’s why he knew a pair of Jacks would be enough to beat Shea Baines’ abductors and whatever Oakshotte and Moo had run into on M-Ceti Eight. The rest were bills that had to be paid in the future. At the moment, however, someone nearby was cooking a magical combination of green peppers, eggs and bacon.