Starcorp 1: Escape from Sol

“Martin didn’t come back,” CC decried with a startled expression.

“I know,” Sawyer returned with a look of worry.

They were engaged in this exchange across a video conference link between their two capsules.

“He can still be found,” Sawyer tried to assure after a moment of silence.

CC nodded her agreement. But this did not lessen her fear. Sawyer paused to assess her and then spoke with a pleading inflection that his evaluation produced.

“Don’t go back out. There are plenty of reserve pilots here that can take your place. Stay on the Orion.”

CC gave no immediate response to this request. This was not because she did not know what to say. It had everything to do with her resistance to saying what she wanted to say.

CC knew as well as Sawyer that another engagement with the UFP Armada would likely mean the end of them all. The fire power of the Armada was only marginally reduced despite a very high number of losses. The number of mows lost in the battle was, by comparison, numerically minuscule. But the ratio of loss was proportionally massive. It was obvious to all that another engagement would likely wipe out Orion’s spacefighter force.

“What will you do?” CC queried in a meek voice.

Sawyer did not want to answer this question. He feared how CC would react if she knew of his intention to go out again. He did not want her pride and competitive nature to prevent her from saving herself.

“Don’t worry about me,” Sawyer returned in a soft voice and with a shake of his head.

“You’re going back out!” CC accused with a look of fright.

“You must not go out!” Sawyer insisted over the beeping of his monitor.

CC was hesitant to give a reply. In her silence, Sawyer took a second to note the appearance of Oscar’s name at the bottom of his monitor.

“It’s Oscar,” Sawyer announced as he connected him to the video conference.

An instant after his face appeared on the screen Oscar blurted out a statement with the inflection of a question.

“Martin didn’t come back?”

“No,” Sawyer responded in a somber voice. “He can still be alive. They’re tracking twenty-three cockpit beacons.”

Sawyer suspected that this was not news to Oscar or CC. A tally of data regarding their engagement with the UFP Armada was available for all to see. They needed only to go online to view it. Among the data displayed there was information on the recovery effort for survivors. Immediately after the battle spaceplanes went about the business of retrieving all cockpits that went active. Information about which cockpit from which mow was withheld. Security protocol forbade the transmission of specific information about the mow, the jettisoned cockpit and the pilot.

When a spaceship was damaged to the extent that it could no longer sustain its occupants the cockpits and the escape pods were the pilots only chance for survival. The beacons inside the cockpit and the escape pod notified all spaceships nearby of their presence and their predicament. Spaceplanes from the Orion were sent out at the start of each battle to retrieve mow cockpits and escape pods with living pilots inside them. During first two hours of this search and retrieval period, these spaceplanes had no competition. The UFP Armada was too scattered to contend with them for the survivors. Despite this advantage, the task of retrieving UFP survivors was left to the UFP. The Orion had no use for prisoners.

To avoid skirmishes with UFP forces, Orion spaceplanes cleared the area of their survivors as quickly as they could. This normally took three to four hours to complete. The flight back to the Orion added another one to two hours to this process. At the start of the second engagement these search and rescue spaceplanes were just returning to the Orion.

The UFP Armada’s search and rescue effort operated in a fashion that was contrary to the Orion. They delayed all efforts to this task until after the Armada had reformed their ranks. This regrouping was a three to four-hour process. The armada’s situation did not require any immediate attention to the survivors. A small group of spacefighters was detached after the Armada regrouped and sent out after the survivors, wherever they were, and for however long it would take to retrieve them. The armada continued without them. Because of this difference in the way they went about it, there was no interaction between their search and rescue teams.

Joshua transmitted his battle report to Gourmand, shortly, after the surviving mows were back aboard the Orion. In the report, he advised that he had seventy-nine mows left, that he added another ten hours to the UFP’s transit time to Mars and that his command would not survive a third engagement with the UFP Armada. Less than an hour after sending this message he got a reply from Gourmand.

“Well done, Admiral Sloan. This should give us the time we need. Avoid any future engagements with the enemy as best you can, but stay within proximity of the UFP force for now. I will let you know when you can break away.”

Joshua was partially pleased with this reply. He did not want to send the gamers back out to engage with the UFP Armada and he was relieved by the order to stay away. He would have been better pleased if Gourmand had given him permission to leave. He would have liked to have been able to exploit the UFP Armada’s disarray to make his escape. He feared and suspected that the UFP would turn their efforts toward capturing or destroying the Orion when they discovered all the starcorp’s had escaped.

From the beginning, Joshua suspected that the goal of this UFP force was to get to Mars as quickly as possible. The speed of their launch from Earth and the absence of any effort to communicate with the starcorp leaders suggested to him that they were aware of a time limit. If this was not true, he rationalized that they would have devoted much more time to the preparation for this battle. He also believed that they would have devoted a lot more time to discussing this new situation with the starcorps. Since neither of these was the case, it only made sense to him that the UFP knew or suspected what was happening in Mars orbit. As the supreme military commander of the starcorps, he felt it was his task to identify the worst-case scenario and to prepare for it.

“Why do they want us to stay here?” Noonan questioned with an annoyed inflection. “We should be racing away from here while that UFP Armada is still trying to pull itself back together.”

“They want us in a position to engage again if anything goes wrong,” Joshua explained in a depressed tone of voice.

“We cannot engage with that armada for a third time!” Noonan insisted with emphatically. “There will be nothing left of us by the end of it!”

Joshua showed no signs that he was affected by Noonan’s impassioned outburst. He understood that it was not directed at him, and he wished that the thinking was not true. Joshua said nothing more until the last spaceplane returned to the Orion, twelve minutes later.

“Lucas, put us on the UFP forces’ three o’clock position. Keep the same distance between us and match their speed,” Joshua instructed the crewman two positions forward and one to the right.

“What’s that going to do?” Noonan questioned with a confused expression.

“Keep us alive, I hope,“′ Joshua returned.

“Our spacefighter losses total one-thousand and forty-four, sir,” the crewman seated at the far front and to the left reported.

General Gruenberg and the VIP passengers seated behind him spent the two hours following the second engagement monitoring the reformation process of the armada. Up until this moment they had nothing more than a ballpark figure for the number of spacefighters they lost in the second engagement. There were more than three dozen spacefighters that appeared to be intact that later showed to be damaged beyond use. This information could only be determined by canvassing the commander of each spacefighter.

Gruenberg was already making plans for his next assault. He had learned within a handful of minutes after the last engagement that the Orion had lost close to two-hundred of its spacefighters in the last engagement. Knowledge of his own losses gave him the data he needed to assess the enemy’s capability. He calculated that the basestar’s spacefighter force would likely not survive a third engagement. This was a point he was quick to share with Eckhart.

“You said that before the last assault, and they outsmarted you. Why should I believe you this time?”

“They lost more than half of their spacefighters in that engagement,” Gruenberg defended. “They can’t endure losses like that again. They’re beaten.”

Eckhart already came to the same conclusion as Gruenberg, but he was impatient for this promised outcome. Finding excuses to denigrate the commander had become a release for his annoyance.

“Let’s hope you’re right this time,” Eckhart exclaimed in a derogatory tone of speech.

Gruenberg paid no heed the insolence in his manner per his nature. He thought little of politicians and only indulged them for whatever time that was necessary to finally be rid of them.

“How long before we can commence the next attack?” Eckhart questioned with a demanding inflection.

Gruenberg promised to start the next engagement within the next three to four hours. In his thoughts, this answer was not taken well by Eckhart. He would have much preferred a report of one to two hours. He had learned from the period between the first and second engagements that Gruenberg calculated a brief respite into this time frame. This was an expenditure of time that Eckhart was not keen on accepting. But his annoyance with his General of the Space Force had not risen so far that he was ready to tell him his business. He accepted the time frame with a grumble and a scowl.

Thirty minutes into this countdown to the next assault, General Gruenberg, his commander and chief; Eckhart, and all others aboard their spaceplane were suddenly startled by a new event. The crewman seated second from the front and to the right shouted out a report with an inflection of amazement in his tone.

“The warship is moving away!”

All within the capsule were quick to take notice of this on the large monitor. Brief burns from the basestar’s main thrusters illuminated it against the black backdrop of space.

“What’s it doing?” Eckhart challenged.

Gruenberg was swift to respond with an “I don’t know.”

“Shall I follow?” The crewman at the front right questioned in a hurry.

“Has it increased its speed?”

“No,” the crewman retorted to Gruenberg’s question. “It looks like a lateral move.”

“Stay on course and hold your speed,” Gruenberg returned after a second of thought.

“What’s going on?” Eckhart challenged in an angry voice.

“The warship is shifting its position, but it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere,” Gruenberg explained as though he was thinking it as he said it.

“And what does that mean?” Eckhart queried back.

Gruenberg muttered out a reply to this with little thought behind it.

“I don’t know yet.”

“Well, should we stay with it?” Eckhart challenged with an obvious display of annoyance.

“No!” Gruenberg sharply overruled. “We haven’t finished reforming our ranks, and it’s not trying to get away.”

Eckhart accepted this decision without question. His primary reason for this was the vehemence in which it was expressed. Eckhart followed the movement of the basestar for the next three hours, along with Gruenberg and all the others in the capsule. By the end of this time, the armada was back in formation. It was at this time that Gruenberg called out to the crewman in the right front seat for a report.

“It’s holding station at our three o’clock. The distance is nearly the same as before.”

“What’s it doing out there?” Eckhart questioned to anyone with an answer.

“The commander of that warship must be trying to get us to divide our forces,’ Wilkinson spoke up in response to the query.

“I think you’re right,” Peter Carr supported. “He probably doesn’t want to take us on at full strength.”

Gruenberg had been considering this for the past two hours, but he had yet to convince himself it was true. There was an aspect of this scheme that did not make sense to him. The basestar was giving him an open path to Mars. He could not believe that the commander would do this just to divide his forces. This gave him cause to be concerned about what might be waiting for them at Mars. He pondered this until Eckhart awakened him several seconds after Carr’s last remark.

“So, what do we do?”

“All ships, thirty percent power to main thrusters. Hold course on Mars.”

Gruenberg shouted this command to his crew sitting in front of him.

“What are you thinking, General,” Eckhart questioned with a look of concern.

“I’m thinking this warship can wait.”

Sawyer, CC, and Oscar had been conversing across their video conference connection for little more than thirty minutes when Noonan gave the lights out order to all gamer space capsules. In giving this order, he advised that they needed to get some rest while they could. Sawyer, CC, and Oscar, promptly, complied with the order and shut down their video conference. More than anything else, this was done out of concern that Noonan would take note of their continuing communication. They knew that their connection would appear as data on his monitor.

Sawyer did not feel a need to go to sleep. The nervous energy that had been churning inside of him from the beginning of this intercept with the UFP Armada was keeping him awake and alert. Their prolonged time in zero gravity had done much to hold off his exhaustion in the past. Despite these factors the backlog of sleep shortly caught up with Sawyer in the enforced quiet and darkness inside his space capsule. He fell deeply into sleep within the first fifteen minutes. He was awakened, nearly six hours later, by a beeping coming from his monitor. After straightening up in his acceleration chair, he looked at his monitor for the cause of this alert. To his surprise and delight, he noted that Martin was calling in. He activated the connection a second behind this discovery.

“Hey!” Sawyer called after Martin’s image appeared on his monitor.

CC’s image was on the monitor too. Her expression was a mixture of joy and relief. Oscar popped onto the screen two seconds behind Sawyer’s appearance in the video connection. His presence came about via an invitation from CC.

“Hi,” Martin returned in a demure voice.

“Ah man, you made it,” Oscar cried out with exuberance.

“Yeah, I’m still alive,” Martin responded with a shrug.

There was a moment of silence as all waited for more from Martin. When Sawyer concluded that this was all that they were going to get, he spoke again.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Martin professed with a nod of his head. “It was scary. But yeah, I’m okay.”

“What happened?”

Martin was slow to respond to Sawyer’s question. His expression reflected his reluctance to relive this recent experience. This was apparent to the extent that Sawyer came to the decision that he needed to withdraw the question. But before he could do this, Martin went into his narration of the past four hours of his life. He showed little regard for the battle. For his listeners, it seemed as if the space-fight had no effect on him. When he commenced speaking about the event that took him out of the fight, his voice took on a far more somber tone.

“I didn’t have time to react. A slug from out of nowhere ripped into my mow. I heard alarms all around me, but I don’t know from which direction it came. The display flickered with static. I-I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t see anything. It all happened so fast. Before I could—think about... It just happened so fast. I don’t know how many times I was hit—four—maybe as many as seven. I knew I was spinning. Centrifugal force kept pulling at. I came close to slamming into the wall of the cockpit a couple of times. The display went all the way out after the third hit. The alarms went out. I was in the dark for three or four seconds, and the emergency lights kicked in. Everything kind of went quiet. I started to float back towards the center of the cockpit. There was just silence. I didn’t know what was going happen next. I-I was terrified that a slug was going to rip right through cockpit at any moment. The next thing I knew, the magnetic arms of my escape pod was pulling me in. I climbed into it as fast as I could. The lid closed as soon as I was in. There was a sudden sensation of acceleration and then nothing. The whole thing happened so fast. There was nothing I could do to stop it, or prevent it. From start to finish it couldn’t have been more than—thirty seconds. I couldn’t hear or see anything. But I did feel the escape pod being detach from the mow. I think I had been floating through space for about two minutes before the hibernation program put me to sleep. After that, I woke up inside an RG01 spaceplane. That was an hour-ago.”

Sawyer, CC, and Oscar listened to his narration without question or comment. For a brief time after, nothing was said while they all digested this report. At the end of this time, CC spoke up in a manner that was designed to ease the tension.

“Well, you’re back now, and we’re happy to see you.”

Martin’s expression remained sullen behind this, and his response came out like a reflex action.

“I’m not going back out there.”

Sawyer and CC were quick to reassure Martin that he did not have to go out again. Oscar, a few seconds late, gave his support to this, as well. Despite their assurances, they were of the opinions that a high skill level in every pilot would be crucial for the next engagement. They all knew that security force veterans were ill-equipped to meet this challenge. The survival of all required that the mows were piloted by gamers. They had no illusions about winning a third fight with the UFP Armada or even breaking its formation. Their only thought at this point was surviving it. The gamers had learned from the video games that the only chance they had against odds like this was with the help of a basestar.

The Orion had a massive array of rail guns and directed energy projectors. By positioning themselves around the basestar, the mows could multiply their firepower. But this was a last-ditch gambit. In a close-quarters fight with a force as large as the UFP Armada, a single basestar would be at a disadvantage. The best that they could hope for was that the UFP Armada would take little interest in them. Without the extended presence of the mows, the armada now had the option of using a portion of its forces to keep the basestar distracted while pressing on to Mars with the remainder. The Orion and its compliment of fighters were in no position to contest this. Defense was the only posture available to them in any third engagement.

“How long have we been sleeping?” Sawyer queried with an inflection of suspicion.

Sawyer looked at the clock on his monitor even as he spoke. It dawned on him at this moment that Martin had to have been off the Orion for at least four hours and likely closer to six. This was the usual length of time that the search and rescue spaceplanes spent off the basestar.

“You’re right,” Oscar gushed out with a look of surprise. “It’s been over five hours.”

The inference in Sawyer’s question did not go unnoticed by anyone. They all knew that Noonan should have roused them more than two hours earlier and set them to the task of preparing for their next engagement.

“Do you think it’s over, Sawyer?” CC questioned with an inflection of hope.

“Why wouldn’t they tell us if it was over?” Oscar questioned with a shrug.

Sawyer was already entertaining that question. It made no sense to him that Admiral Sloan would or could keep this information a secret. The support crew members would have been given new orders if the battle was over. And they, in turn, would have passed it on to the pilots. It was during these moments that Sawyer disliked the military restrictions on the flow of information. He was accustomed to having access to much of the data that was fed into the command space capsules of civilian starships.

“Something new must be happening,” Sawyer muttered out to himself more than anyone else.

All the Gamers wakened from their slumber over the next thirty minutes and joined in on the confusion about what was happening. Sawyer’s belief that a change in their situation had occurred spread rapidly through the ranks of the mow pilots. Joshua’s report to the crew on the status of things came two hours later. In it, he advised that they had completed their task and would not be initiating any more engagements to slow the UFP Armada unless ordered to do so by BX01.

“We are waiting for the order to break away. Until then we will limit ourselves to shadowing the UFP Armada.”

This last bit of news from Joshua produced applause from crew members throughout the basestar. The gamers were the most enthusiastic participants in this. But this enthusiasm shortly turned to boredom. For the next thirteen hours, the crew of the Orion had little to do, and for the pilots this was doubly true. The habitat ring was off limits to all ship’s personnel while the basestar was in combat ready mode. For most aboard the basestar, without anything to do, the space capsules began to feel like community coffins with built-in entertainment centers. The pilots could do nothing but wait for word that they were free to break away from the UFP Armada. Admiral Sloan received his permit to break away near the end of a fourteen-hour wait. He passed this on to his crew as soon as he got it. It was another two hours after that when the gamers heard the call to battle stations.