Chapter 653

Ship

Arlene is talking to Worthington and Camp.

...”The only reason you’re in charge of this unit is because of your husband, father, whatever. Just because you’re a good pilot doesn’t mean that you should be in charge of this unit.”

Camp made a noise, but Ann looked at him and shook her head.

“I’m sorry you feel that way. I shouldn’t say this, but I will anyway. I was left with little choice. So, you’ll have to take that up with the General. I didn’t call you in here to dress you down. Conversely, I called you in to ask you to ease up on trying to be absolutely perfect. It’s reached the point that I think you are going to hesitate because you think that I’ll find something wrong with what you do. I am not looking for your mistakes; I, and everyone else in the unit, make enough of our own without my trying to find more. It doesn’t seem to bother the other pilots. They realize it, or Ann or I point it out, and they try the maneuver again. That’s what our practice is for. I just want us to develop our demo, practice it until we come across as professionals, and get the show over with. If you can’t work with that, say so and I’ll ask the Colonel to move you back to your old unit, and I will tell him it is at your own request. So, Lieutenant Worthington, what’s it going to be?”

“I’ll stay,” he snapped before spinning on his heel and exiting Arlene’s office without being dismissed.

“Ma’am, I...” Camp began.

“You aren’t in any trouble. If you wish to go back to your old unit...”

“Respectfully, no, Ma’am. Other than a shitty partner, I’m totally satisfied to be in this unit,” he shot back, almost desperately. “I want, very much, to be here. I’ve allowed him to make the decisions rather than constantly argue with him — decisions that I knew were not the best. If I had stood my ground, we would never have gotten our interceptor shot to pieces.”

“And if Worthington decides to go back to his old unit...”

“Good riddance. I’m tired of his griping and getting me into trouble. I can get myself into enough trouble without his constant ‘help.’ Should I be given a new partner ... uh, Ma’am, nobody could learn to fly an interceptor well enough in the time we have left. That said, if it comes down to it, I’ll still do my best to train a new partner.”

“I might have to hold you to that,” Arlene said as she stared eye to eye with Camp, who did not look away.

After a moment, Camp hesitantly spoke again. “Ma’am, I know him. He’ll wait until the last minute to quit. You can absolutely count on it. He’ll do it hoping to screw the show up and make you look bad. I’ve been expecting this and planning. I can fly the demo by myself. With the AI, it can be done.”

As Arlene stood there, a grin slowly crept across her face. “Commendable, Lieutenant Camp, but let me ask you this. Do you trust me, really trust me?”

“Ma’am, you know I do, or I wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

“Good. Just continue to train with Worthington the way you have been. We will plan on his quitting just before the first scheduled date of the show, but it will work out. I guarantee it. Oh, yes. Make certain you are the primary pilot at least half the time. When we meet in the morning, I’ll reiterate that everyone should have equal time as the primary pilot. I’ll make it clear that I will check. Someone could be sick, and I want us equally trained in both positions.”

Camp wasn’t nearly as confident as his Wing Commander appeared to be, but when he was dismissed, he saluted smartly and left.

When the door had closed behind Camp, Ann turned to her partner/sister-wife. “Sister, what’s going on in that devious little mind of yours?” she asked with a grin.

Arlene grinned back at her. “Well, since Worthington has made it clear that he thought he should have been made Wing Commander instead of a seventeen-year-old girl...”

Ann snapped back, “Despite your having twice his IQ while being able to fly circles around him, not to mention kicking his ass over and over in mock combat.” Frustrated that Worthington would continue to challenge her sister-wife, even after Arlene had repeatedly handed him his ass in combat, Ann continued, “Had it not been for our weapons being stopped down to training mode, he and his partner would have died — repeatedly. Yet ... the idiot just keeps on with his bullshit.”

Arlene barely held back a chuckle. “Anyway, you know I didn’t want this job, but...”

“You’ve excelled at it, anyway...” Ann again broke in to say.

“Okay, enough from the peanut gallery,” Arlene responded with a smile. “We’re a team. I couldn’t do it without you. We have excelled at it, according to our husband, although he might be a wee bit prejudiced.” When they both laughed, she went on, “You fly every bit as well as I do. But, by damn, I’ve done my best, and I’m not going to be bullied by that asshole,” she said past gritted teeth.

“So, you have an answer for his quitting at the last moment.”

“Damn straight,” she mimicked her husband.

Ann stood staring at Arlene for a few seconds before a grin slowly morphed across Ann’s face as she realized what her Wing Commander was thinking. “Yes.”

Morales and his wives had spent the afternoon with Sergeant Higgins. When he had learned that the group had only just begun running, he frowned and told them he would cut them some slack today. “However,” he said with that tone in his voice, “in a few weeks, I will be one of those training and testing you on the obstacle course. The Colonel has informed me that everyone, other than the alien females, will be required to pass the obstacle course, although you will not necessarily be held to the same standards that we require for our teams — yet. However, he did say that I could use pushups and sit-ups as an incentive, should I so desire.

“You are not military, so I have several things to advise you about. First off, I am not an officer. I am not a Sir. I will not bore you with the standard somewhat facetious comment that Sergeant’s frequently make about working for a living, implying that officers don’t. In this unit, even the officers work, and there are damn few of them. When given an order — suggestion, whatever, your appropriate response will be, Yes, Sergeant, or No, Sergeant. You are civilians, so you do not salute me or anyone else here, but I salute officers in uniform.

“You need to understand firmly that I am not forgiving of stupidity or laziness. When I tell you to study for the next class, I expect you to do just that. If there is a diagram of the parts of a weapon in your study material, then without my having to tell you, memorize everything on the diagram and be able to defend your comments, should you be asked to have any. You may ask questions, but refer to my previous comment about stupidity. However, I had rather you ask a stupid question and consequently learn the correct answer, than go through this training and not know something that might save your life. You will probably get pissed at me. I will not lose any sleep over it. My only objective is to teach you the material until it becomes second nature to you.”

Higgins held up his pulse rifle. “Upon first glance at a pulse rifle, your first thought probably was that it is a strange-looking beast. We refer to it as a pulse rifle because we do not want to go around saying something like pulse activated blah blah blah killing system or maybe some acronym that the orbs, as we sometimes call them — eggheads — have come up with while eating their peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch. It was designed and has undergone continuous development primarily for our assault teams and is a part of a complete combat suit, including a smart helmet. Only when the pulse rifle is fully mated with the combat suit and smart helmet can its full capabilities be employed. However, even without the helmet, it is far superior to any rifle ever built.

“As an assault weapon, there has never been a man-portable one invented on Earth to rival it. None have even come close. It can produce a virtual stream of death unparalleled by any assault rifle ever manufactured. Yet, it is light enough for one person to march with it for miles with minimal discomfort. While the power packs are not light by any means, still a trooper can carry enough on his/her body to conduct or withstand an assault for much longer periods than he/she could with a conventional assault rifle. Generally, assault rifles are capable of firing between six hundred and twelve hundred rounds per minute and are often equipped with thirty-round magazines, which, of course, makes for frequent magazine changes even when using short bursts.

“One variation of the pulse rifle will penetrate a modern tank if the pulses are held in one place for roughly ten seconds. The pulses are virtually invisible unless the humidity is near one hundred percent, so focusing the weapon on one place can be interesting, particularly if the tank crew knows what’s going on. With the tank maneuvering, it would not be that easy, but still probably doable. Damaging tracks and running gear requires less exposure time and is even easier.”

All of them were staring at their rifles. “However, your rifles are electronically stopped down and will only produce a stream of standard pulses. Set on maximum, they will still penetrate any body armor ever designed and will penetrate most commercial vehicles, through and through, with one pulse. Where only a short while ago, each canister would produce only fifty pulses, the ones you will train with will have enough energy to fire one hundred full-burst pulses.

“Before we train today, I will set your weapon to be fired only by anyone who has been blocked. Should your rifle get into the public’s hands, it will seem to be a strange and complicated-looking, but useless, prop, although a very realistic-looking one. Only the teams are issued pulse rifles capable of doing what I just described, but still, what you have in front of you on the table is beyond anything ever issued to any regular troops on this planet. Treat it with respect, and it might just save your ass.

“Colonel Matthews and his team, along with Lieutenant Kayla Fisher, were in a firefight with a mercenary team on the outskirts of Atlanta a while back. Should they have had the new model pulse rifles, the firefight would have been over in seconds. As it was, the team wiped out the mercenaries in just a few minutes. It was basically during a tornado, or very near one. Still, the pulse rifles, as they always do, functioned perfectly under some very adverse conditions.

“Your weapons have been electronically blocked down, so you won’t be killing any tanks with it, but you will have the additional pulses from the newer, higher-capacity power canisters, plus a more powerful weapon than the Colonel and his team had that day.

“In the beginning, it was, indeed, just a pulse rifle, but as I implied, it is a continuing experiment of a weapon system that not only is efficient and deadly, but rugged. I don’t know whether someone challenged the orbs to build a system that was nearly indestructible or not, but to our pleasure, they seem to be bent on doing just that.

“All of us have been blocked, so there are no secrets kept from the Colonel’s family and those he has seen fit to block. One of the science teams brought back something from a planet that circles so near its star that it takes special equipment to mine it. The material — it isn’t metal as we know it — can be worked just as you would mild steel, but after it undergoes a process, the material can no longer be machined or changed in any way. It was first used, and still is, as a ‘forever’ abrasive — think sandpaper or the cutters on road milling equipment that grinds away a layer of roadway so a new layer can be put down. It costs a ton of money to replace the carbide cutters that do the work, but with the new material, it seems never to wear out, or at least it comes very close to it.

“Then, one of the orbs must have had a brainstorm about pulse rifle barrels. When they figured out how to make the barrels out of the new material, and the weapon worked fabulously, then why not everything else that the rifle is made of? Bottom line: you can screw up the optics, but anything made of the new substance will still be there and functioning — no matter what happens to it. Now, we have power canisters as well as rifle parts made of the same substance. It was easy, according to them, to make a scope housing from the new material — minus the optics, of course. But ... telling them that something is impossible seems to bother their busy little heads — or big heads, as the case may be. Now I am told that they have discovered how to make a transparent version of the material, which should eventually result in the scope optics being made of the same indestructible stuff. When that happens, we will have a genuinely indestructible weapon.