Chapter 6 Part 1

Chapter 6

The five VRADs performed a flawless launch. They passed through the carrier's EM shielding and came about on a direct course toward the dark backside of Jupiter. Even at the speeds that they would soon be cruising, the trip to the giant planet would take many long hours.

Under the furious thrust of the fusion reactor that was the VRAD's heart, the robot craft accelerated to cruise velocity and began their long flight. They flew in the conventional V wing formation with the command shuttle, also a drone operated from the Andromeda's own bridge, in the slot of the flight. The quintet of deadly drones made a mad dash through deep space tethered to their commands by a tight, telemetry signal.

Deep within the belly of the giant carrier, the VRAD crews of Ghost Squadron went through their post launch checks to verify operation. In module number two, Blackjack and his crew were settling down for the long voyage. Roulette had fired the KW-4's cap and Lady Luck had verified their defensive systems by blasting it into nothingness.

Predictably, the other crews were doing likewise, and their activities had not gone unnoticed by the Wildcard's sensory systems. "Dixie to Wraith," Shiloah's voice sounded over the intercom from VR module 5. "All checks are complete and we are dropping out of formation to join with the comm shuttle."

Spectre's own voice replied. "Roger, Dixie, we copy your maneuver. How do we look from trail?"

There was a pause as the trail, or last ship in the formation, observed the rest of the flight. Finally she answered crisply: "all units look good from our vantage."

"Roger," Specter confirmed. "Lead to Ghost Squadron, we are several hours from refueling, but I want to go over a few things while we are in cruise. After we refuel, I don't want any mistakes. We can't afford any. Acknowledge lead."

"Two," Blackjack responded indicating that his crew were listening. The Bandit and the Storm respond likewise.

"Three."

"Four."

Finally the Dixie closed the acknowledgment. "Trail."

The squadron commander addressed them all over the intermodule intercom. "All right, folks, I want this thing to go smoothly. We have all trained well and there is no reason to be afraid. Your lives are not in danger and that is one more advantage that we have. Let the enemy jocks be afraid. They are the ones who could get killed."

Specter continued. "We will make our refueling runs in flight order. Keep an interval of five seconds between each of you and keep your attention on your task. Any break in formation for any reason should pull up and reverse course to starboard. If possible fall into the back of the trail and make a second attempt to refuel. If the malfunction is severe, pull into formation with trail and try to work it out. If you lose your 'go' status, notify the squadron lead and assume supportive posture. Lead transfer will go in flight order. Acknowledge, lead."

"Two."

"Three."

"Four."

"Trail."

"After refueling, we will go to cell formation and run silent. That should hide our approach as much as possible. They know we are coming, but they don't know when or how we will attack. If I were in their place, I would expect an all out attack by a carrier and battle group. There is every reason to believe that we might catch them with their pants down."

"The first sign that they have located us will be when their broad scan changes to a tight scan or even a tracking signal. When that happens, we will launch the decoy to draw out their fighters and tease that big gun into firing. Once the decoy is lost, we will have to burn at full power to get within its minimum effective range. If we can mix it up with their fighters, they will have to fore go any shoot and forget weapons and manually track us. That will also help." The pep talk was precise and to the point.

Spectre did not wast time by carrying on on the radio. He had said what was necessary and left it at that. The squadron knew how the chain of command would regress if the Wraith were disabled. He felt certain that Blackjack, the next most senior crew commander, could take over the mission if necessary.

The squadron had also been given their contingency orders if they had a malfunction. If their ship became dysfunctional, it was better for the VRAD to pull out of the fight than to lose control over it and let the enemy capture it.

The time to refuel came several long hours into the flight. Far behind them, the Andromeda was burning her own reactors as hard as she could to join in on the upcoming battle. The squadron of VRADs approached the huge gas giant's dark side and prepared for their refueling run. "Wraith to Ghost Squadron, we are at the initial point for the refueling run."

Upon hearing Spectre's announcement, Roulette made a final entry into the navigational system and Blackjack's HUD altered to show him the necessary course changes that would place them on the refueling track.

Slowly the Wildcard came about onto a course that dove into the outer layers of the Jupiter's hydrogen atmosphere.

"Refueling run checklist," Lady Luck announced. She began reading off a list of steps necessary to take to insure a safe and successful refueling run. It was her task to read the checklist because the her position was relatively unused during refueling. "Reactor at fifty percent," she ordered.

"Reactor at fifty," Longshot replied. Because they were taking on raw hydrogen, it was a safety measure to reduce the reactor's heat and static electricity emissions. The last thing they wanted was for the hydrogen in their fuel cells to ignite.

"Set load selector to scoop," she continued.

"Refueling selector set to scoop," Longshot answered.

"Set holding tanks to purge."

"Tanks set for purge."

"Verify Nav course." Roulette compared his readings with the sensory positions of several beacon satellites in Jupiter's orbit. Everything appeared to be within acceptable parameters.

"Nav shows course and timing okay."

"Control surfaces preliminary." Blackjack flipped a switch on his console and began making motions with his yoke and steering pedals. Though in the vacuum of space, the atmospheric control surfaces had no effect, the feedback systems told him that they were in operation.

"Control surfaces operable," he said as he returned the ship to normal control.

"Ghost Squadron, this is lead" Spectre's voice came over the com. "We are commencing our refueling run in ten seconds. Maintain a five second interval for safety."

On the Wildcard's instrumentation panel, the sensor image of the Wraith moved away and dove into the planet's outer atmospheric layers. Five seconds later, Blackjack fired the thrusters and brought the Wildcard around , lining the nav cursors up on his HUD.

"We are I P inbound crew," he advised. "Decent attitude is within limits and our glide path is stable."

"I show lead's penetration of the first layer in twelve seconds," Roulette stated. Precisely twelve seconds later, the image of the Wraith wavered as it entered the Jovian atmosphere.

"Atmospheric in eight seconds," Roulette announced, "two, one control surfaces."

"Control surfaces," Blackjack responded as the VRAD switched from deep space to atmospheric mode. In truth they had been in the thinner part of the planets atmosphere for the last five seconds, that was a fairly deep range where the air was so thin that the aircraft's control surfaces were ineffective, so the ship did not activate its control surfaces until it was in thicker air.

"Steerability check," Lady Luck ordered.

Blackjack performed response tests on the pitch yaw and roll motions of the craft. When he was satisfied of the ship's performance, he confirmed the test results. "Steering check good."

"Telemetry," she continued with the checklist.

"Data link secure," Longshot replied. "No atmospheric interference."

"Track position?"

Roulette responded almost immediately. "I show a good entry. We are on track and on time. I have a positive ID on all flight members."

Lady Luck resumed her checklist. "Proceed with refueling. Thrusters to idle."

Blackjack complied. "Thrusters at idle."

"Shunt start scrams," she ordered. Longshot made some adjustments on his controls and rerouted some power from the reactor to the atmospheric scram jets. He was rewarded with operation indicators. "Scrams on line," he stated.

"Accelerate to ram refueling speed."

"Blackjack throttled forward as the secondary engines drove the VRAD to hypersonic velocities, slamming huge amounts of hydrogen into the ram scoops where the fuel was compressed and stored in high pressure holding tanks.

Blackjack kept the craft lined on his Nav cursor for many long moments. Perhaps an hour later, Longshot announced their status. "Holding tanks full," he said.

Lady Luck recited the last few steps of the refueling checklist. "Proceed with track egress procedures."

"Egress window coming up in nine seconds," Roulette announced.

"Accelerate to maximum scram," Lady Luck dictated.

"Scrams at MRT," Blackjack replied when the engines were at maximum rated thrust. "Approaching mach nine."

"Reactor at seventy percent."

"Coming up to seventy," Longshot replied. "Fuel pressure steady."

"Egress window is at thirty two degrees up pitch in four seconds," Roulette advised, "two, one, execute."

Blackjack nosed the Wildcard up and the VRAD began a smooth climb.

"Control surfaces interplanetary," Lady Luck continued.

"Control surfaces interplanetary," Blackjack concurred.

"Thrusters normal?"

Blackjack verified that the scram jets had shut down and the thrusters had come online. "Thrusters normal."

"Continue to egress point and resume flight plan." Lady Luck closed her log book.

"Egress in three seconds," Roulette announced. "We are on course and on time."

Several minutes later, Spectre's voice came over the intercom. "That was very pretty people. Let's hope the rest of our day goes that well."

"Now I want everyone to line up in cell formation and go to cruise. Maintain one minute of orbital standard separation. Otherwise, we have a good long ride ahead of us so if you want to clear off feel free to do so as long as your autopilot is operating." "I would like to see all commanders in the ready lounge in ten minutes."

Longshot was the first person to clear off, or take a break. "Blackjack, I have to clear off for relief."

"Fine, Ben," the commander said breaking tradition by using the flight engineer's actual name during the mission. "I am going to put the ship on auto. Lady Luck and Roulette are to stay on line until Longshot or myself returns."

Roulette and Lady luck acknowledged and Blackjack followed Longshot out of the VR module. Blake watched as his flight engineer trotted to the latrine. Ben must have been needing to go badly.

Blake entered the ready lounge and found two of his counterparts already waiting. When Major Duncan entered, he seemed quite pleased. "That is one of the best refueling runs we have made on this tour," he beamed. "Everyone looked fairly sharp."

Spectre's face became grim. "Now is the dangerous part. Don't let your people fall asleep on the job. We have several hours before we come within the enemy's scan range, so if they want to relax let them, but when we hit the PCTAP, the positive control turn around point, make sure that they are on their toes."

He opened a portfolio and took a set of cards out. "This mission has a high security level, so I want you to load these chips into your modules. Up until now we have been running on standard data link security, but as we said earlier, we can't afford to lose a VRAD so that it could be picked up. The Syndicate still can't quite match our technology, and we don't want to give them any help."

When one of the cards was passed, Blake took it and examined it quite closely. The label on the card's cover was identified with the number, two, coordinating to the module number that they were flying. "That is all I had for you," Spectre concluded. "Watch each other's backs, and don't lose your ship if you can help it."

The group of pilots filed out and Blake fell in line. He was almost out the door when Duncan tapped his shoulder. "Blackjack, could you wait up?" Blake waited as Spectre gathered up his materials. "Since we are the ones who are going to penetrate the enemy base, I thought we might try to decide how to go about it."

"I noticed that you have us loaded with a nuke," Blake said. Does that mean that you want us to go after one of the primary targets?"

"Definately," Duncan answered. "We have one too. The Defense Command only authorized two for this mission. If we split them up, it increases the chances that we can deliver one of them on target."

"It also increases the chances of us losing on of them too." Blake pointed out. "That is true," Duncan conceded, "but to be successful we only have to take out one of the two primary targets. If we take out the meteor gun, they can't fire it, and if we take out that solar collector, they won't have the power to fire their meteor gun."

"Meteor gun?" Duncan shrugged. "What else would you call it?" Blake nodded. "Okay, a meteor gun then." They can't fire the gun on reactors?

"Probably not, or else why would they have the collector out there in the first place?" Blake tugged at his chin.

"So do you want to split up and go after the targets at the same time?"

"That would split their attention." Duncan had a knack for getting right to the bottom of the issue.

"I guess your right. Which one do you want us to go after?"

"Actually I want you to go after the gun. Roulette is the better gunner and the meteor gun is most likely going to be the more difficult target. We will go after the collector. The blasted thing is over five kilometers across. If we can't hit it, I will personally serve the whole squadron a prime buffet at our next shore leave."

"Who has the decoy?"

"Bandit has it. They will launch it when we think the ememy has a solid scan and is going into acquisition on their particle cannon. By the time they get it recharged, we should be mixing it up with their fighters. Then if I am right, they will try to move their battle craft in front of us to block our path. We can skip around them and attack the main base while Bandit and Storm keep the gunboats busy."

Duncan noted that Blake was frowning. "What's bothering you?"

"A lot of our success depends on how well we avoid taking damage. A single hit could conceivably cost us a VRAD."

"Not from a fighter," Duncan said confidently. "The VRADs can withstand several direct hits from fighters without losing anything."

"Our shield are not designed to stand up against gunships," Blake pointed out.

"Don't let them get a good shot at you," Duncan cautioned. "Our shields will turn glancing shots aside. Don't let them hit you solidly. That won't be too hard, because we are going to give them a bloody nose before they can get too many shots at us. Did you noticed the SRAMs in your weapons bay?"

"I was about to ask about them."

"Well the Bandit is carrying a set of mini-HERCULES in addition to the SRAMs and the Storm is carrying a chaff net. Between the two of them, the gun ships should be so confused that they won't be able to get a solid lock on us until our SRAMs are slamming into their hulls. If we do it right, we can disable a healthy portion of their fire control systems."

"You have gone over this with the others?" Blake asked referring to his fellow commanders.

"Yes," Duncan assured him. "You would have heard it as well if you had not been late to the pre-launch briefing."

"We were not late," Blake complained. "We were here exactly when you told us to be here."

"In the military, being on time is late," Duncan reminded him. Blake knew that the major was right. He had long been told to always be early.

"Don't sweat it, Blake. Just get back to your children and get them ready for the show."

Blake nodded and followed Duncan out into the corridor which led back to the VR modules. The audible throb in the corridor indicated that the huge carrier was running at near flank speed to try to close the distance with the enemy. He stopped in front of module number two and removed the card from it's plastic cover. The translucent crystal could contained over ten terabytes of information. This particular program was nothing more than a complex mathematical function which synchronized the data link frequency shifting and encrypting to prevent jamming of interception. Blake slipped the card into a slot on the module's master control panel and opened the door.