Chapter 5

“No, we’ve been hitting. Watch your monitor.”

She watched the symbols, and she saw a series of faint straight lines reaching out from what she realized was their fighter. One by one, the approaching red symbols disappeared until only three were left. “Now you can power up the lasers.”

“What did you hit them with?” demanded Pandora.

“Maw duce,” said Alan as he powered up all systems on the fighter and laid a course for the three remaining pirates.

“A fifty caliber gun? You hit them with a slug thrower?”

“Four rounds each.” He took full control of the fighter and took a deep, shaking breath. “Berserker One engaging,” he said into the microphone and charged straight at the pirates. There was no dog fighting as Pandora knew it. There was no one-on-one engagement that spun and wove around the sky like Pandora saw in the vids. No, Captain Scarlett charged straight at the remaining pirates, his lasers slashing at them as he charged. He plowed through their formation and spun his fighter 180 degrees as he shot. They were now retreating from the pirates, but still facing them. Alan’s lasers continued to slash the remains of the pirate ships until all the red icons were gone from their screens.

Then it was quiet. Alan set in a course back to SS Peake, leaving ten slowly expanding clouds of debris in his wake. They were silent all the way back to the Peake. Occasionally Alan would twitch, but he was quiet the whole time until they could physically see the Peake hanging in space. Dim light from the distant Jupiter reflected off the blocky cargo ship. “Squirt IFF, please”

“I ... uh...” Pandora searched the control panel. “There it is.” She hit the switch and the IFF circuit sent out a classified “Identify Friend or Foe” signal telling the SS Peake that this little flying gun platform was a friend. Green lights illuminated on the belly of the Peake, and Alan brought the fighter closer and closer. He retracted the antennas, the dual .50 caliber guns and the quad laser emitters, then eased into position. Pandora was looking up at the belly of the freighter as they approached. Then, as they docked, the cockpit of their fighter was inside the pressurized ready room. It was an amazing sight for the bomber pilot. Her ships are usually as big or bigger than this freighter.

Alan locked the fighter in place, remotely connected umbilicals, then shut down the single engine. Once that was done, he was out of the cockpit in a flash. He kicked off of the open cockpit and sailed to the life support office and stripped the environment suit to his waist. He grabbed an airsick bag from a dispenser and vomited. “Are you ok sir?” asked the life support technician as he handed Alan his uniform. The greatest fighter pilot in the Western Alliance didn’t even look at the kid. He just shoved his airsick bag in a disposal chute, grabbed another bag, then took his one piece uniform from the spaceman and kicked off, sailing out of the room, leaving his environment suit floating in his wake.

Pandora was pulling off her environment suit when a member of the freighter’s flight crew entered the ready room. “Ma’am, Admiral Schirra wants you on the bridge.”

Pulling on her uniform, she floated up to the bridge, which was a lot more cramped than she expected. All the video dramas show huge, spacious bridges. On the carriers and bombers she’s been on, the bridges were comfortable but not exactly large. There was room there to nap because a crewmember could spend up to twenty earth hours on a shift. A spacious bridge only existed on earthside ocean liners and video programs. This bridge was cramped. It looked like the cockpit of a U-700 shuttle, but they moved the navigation and engineering stations up into the passenger area and turned the seats sideways.

The Navigator got up from her station and said, “You can take the call here.” She handed Colonel Vermillion a pair of headsets for privacy as Pandora settled in and attached her seat belt to keep from drifting off. When Pandora was ready, the navigator reached over her shoulder and pressed the Play button, then drifted off for a tube of coffee.

The message from Admiral Schirra was recorded over an hour ago. It had to be, because moving at the speed of light, that’s how long it would take the video message to travel from Armstrong station near the Earth’s moon to the SS Peake as it neared Saturn.

“Colonel. I am assuming that you survived the action with the Saturnian Pirates. If you didn’t you can turn this video off now.” Pandora groaned. Admiral Schirra had a sense of humor. Not a good one, but it was there.

“Intelligence has it that they are stationed on the Saturnian moon Tethys, which is made up of water ice and are planning to cut up the moon and sell pieces to the colonies. IF you survived I am ordering you to make sure that this does not happen again. Captain Scarlett is not to fly into battle out there among the gas giants. I do not want to have the legacy of the Strike Force Berserkers wasted on a classified mission outside of the asteroid belt where details can never be released.”

What? What was he talking about? She rewound the message and played it again, and it made even less sense the second time she heard it. This time, she let it play to the end.

“The Berserkers are still heroes around the colonies, both in the Western Alliance aligned and in the Eastern Bloc colonies. They are still seen as protectors and guardians to the colonists. If Scarlett wants to kill himself in full view of the colonies while protecting them and end the story there, so be it. Your job is to get him back to Mars, or at least high Mars orbit where his death isn’t wasted. Schirra out.”

She sat staring at the screen. What the fuck! What did he just say? What does he mean wasting the legacy of the Strike Force Berserkers? Alan isn’t suicidal ... is he? Sure, it’s been three years but ... then she remembered the one chance she got to look into his one good eye, and she realized that Alan, her Alan, wasn’t in there.

“Problems with the captain, ma’am?” Pandora turned around, and it was Commander Elliott See, the Captain of the Peake. He was sitting behind her but facing forward. “You might have a talk with Chief Cernan down in Fighter Maintenance section.” The Colonel gave him a look that did everything but accuse him of reading her mind. “Go have a chat with the chief. He’s been the Captain’s personal plane captain for over a decade.”

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