Incursion Vector

028

[▲] INS Issac Asimov, de Brazza Waypoint

“Flight Roughneck is green for launch.”

“One zero seconds to reversion,” announced their new grandmaster, a graduate of the Annapolis Naval Academy. Sparrow had never met an albino before and the bright red eyes had been a bigger shock than the deathly pale skin. That he also used the exact same corrective implants to compensate for his poor vision as Calli Halpern had made him laugh out loud and garnered him a nasty look from Captain James. Still, Dorian Watts was almost as good at his job as Calli was, at least from the few sims they had run on their way out to de Brazza.

Theoreticals never quite prepared one for the real thing, however. He had faith that the members of Loonies they'd absorbed would handle themselves fine, but the fresh commissions they had picked up, Proteus pilot William Ross and their new Abrams meat shield Clarissa Kelley, were wildcards. Nava had scared the shit out of them with the absolute worst sim scenarios she could come up with and they survived longer than the rest who were up for graduation. Beyond that no one really knew much about Slick or Typhoon, as they had decided their callsigns would be.

Watts' voice came over their pensively silent com channel again. “Raiche, Onilova, Raskova, Shih, prepare for disengage.”

The four Timur-class corvettes they were carrying along with them were part of the same unit that he had lead mock engagements against with the Heinlein. All of their Flight Lieutenants were extremely competent people, pretty much the baseline for anyone behind the controls of a corvette, but it was Makhar and her Marina Raskova that had run circles around them. The hilarity of that day was somewhat dulled for him now that Herald and Zee were dead, but watching Redloader fall over himself laughing as the newest cadet of Flight Methuselah was dragged out into space completely clueless as to why was still a pretty indelible memory of good times they'd had.

“Reversion,” said Watts calmly. Hell broke loose a second later as every collision alarm on the ship went off and the hangar blacked out. “Unidentified vessels in dismount path. Brace for evasion!”

“This ought to be good,” laughed Vijay, unconcerned with the prospect of their crashing into an unexpected ship in the engagement sphere. Roughneck's definition of a “close call” was a lot more narrow than that of the Asimov's bridge crew. Captain James had trained his cadets to enter a state of controlled panic if something was less than a few hundred kilometers away. Unless that something was within a kilometer's spitting distance, the original pilots of Roughneck and Loonies couldn't bring themselves to get excited.

Nearly being rammed by an alien ship made of God-knew-what left a sort of lasting impression on people.

“Control, Birdie: what's in the sphere?” Sparrow finally asked as he felt the Asimov lurch sharply along its negative Z axis.

“Five unidentified ships in sphere,” reported Watts. “Three read for Colonial manufacture, unknown origin. Two come back as Alpha-type incursion ships. Vultures are thick in the sphere, concentrated on the three unknown vessels.”

“Lovely,” said Sparrow with a slight smirk. “Roughneck listen up: we are on a vulture hunt. Loophole on Watson, Nava on Agneya. Goldie, Typhoon, Slick: you're herding for the Hayhas.”

Their grandmaster seemed utterly confused as he gave them another update. “Colonial ships in sphere are calling themselves members of the... Hashemite Caliphate.”

He frowned at his screens, vaguely recalling something Leo had once spoken of offhandedly during a tactics session. “Hashemite? Those guys are like the migrant fleet's Flying Dutchman. They're supposed to be dead.”