Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Secretive Friends

2953-09-24 – Tales from the Inbox: Kel’s Secretive Friends 

As Traveler eased closer to the other ship on maneuvering thrusters only, Sadek Sherburn watched uneasily from his station on the command deck. Obviously, the craft’s control scheme was optimized for Kel’s use, but there had been enough space on the aft bulkhead for a small second console and crash-pad chair. It had been months since that set-up had been rigged, but still Sadek hadn’t quite gotten over his agoraphobia doing duty shifts under that great bubble of transparency. 

It was the perfect place to watch the docking procedure, of course; he could see along Traveler’s gracefully curving flank to the projection housing the airlock and docking machinery, and got a perfect view of how much larger that other ship was. Its sharp prow extended into the darkness far forward of Traveler’s curved nose, and the swell of its engine section didn’t begin until far aft of the aftmost antenna of Kel’s vessel. 

At least it was obviously a human-made vessel. For his first months aboard, that was a rarity; almost the moment they’d had a full crew, Kel had taken his ship deep into what was, theoretically, the un-surveyed Sagittarius Frontier. There, after some wrangling, they had taken aboard a cargo of translucent alien-tech strike hulls, built the same way as Traveler itself. The hope had been to ferry to Sagittarius Gate to sell them, but it hadn’t been that simple. Nothing profitable, in Sadek’s experience, ever was. 

A ship unknown to the computer had appeared out of the black in the outskirts of an anonymous star system, weapons hot and comms open. After a private conversation with its skipper, Kel had cheerily brought Traveler in to dock, apparently fearing nothing. 

The shock of docking reverberated through the ship. A moment later, Kel took his claw-like hands off the controls and activated the intercom. “Please report to port airlock.” He released the control with a double-jointed flourish and turned to Sadek. “I was not expecting my friends so far out from the Gate. But it is a good time to introduce you.” 

Just as Kel rose from his chair, innumerable lights on that great grim bulk they’d just docked to came to life. Sadek blinked, un-comprehending for a long moment. Those lights illuminated an eerily familiar insignia, a crown of gold set with black stars. Where had he seen it before? 

Unlike most vessels built by humans which used vertical lifts and stair-shafts to connect the decks, Traveler employed a revolving, diagonal chair-lift descending the aft dorsal midline. Kel took the first chair, and Sadek stared at the insignia a moment longer while the second one appeared for him. It meant trouble, he was certain. Almost everything about this ship did. 

Sadek rode the chair-lift down three decks, then got off and backtracked forward to the corridor that would take him to the airlock. Kel was already there when he arrived, along with the rest of the crew – the engineer Alicia Powers and the young tech Elliott Deadman. Deadman looked as if he had just rolled out of bed to answer the summons, and that was probably what had happened; he and Powers had long ago chosen to alter their sleep cycles so one technical spacer was awake at all times and one was on duty two shifts out of three. 

Kel rubbed his three-fingered hands together. “Friends. Shipmates. I ask you to be on your best behavior. The commander of the vessel that has come to meet us here tells me their masters have a business proposal for us from those who have done me kindness before. One that could not wait until we returned to the Gate.” 

“Who are they?” Alicia Powers had, of course, heard Kel refer to the obligations he’d satisfied before taking on the crew. Evidently sworn to secrecy, he’d not revealed much about this to anyone, not even Sadek, except to hint that the favor had been related to how well equipped his ship was, in its human-tech configuration.  

“We have docked with the vessel of war Cour-de-Lion.” Kel bowed his bulbous-eyed head briefly, as if in respect to the name, though it certainly meant nothing to him, being not even an Anglo-Terran word. 

Deadman, barely paying attention, suddenly stiffened. “You can’t be serious.” 

Sadek turned to the young man. “Is there a problem?” 

“The only ship I know by that name is Sovereign Security’s new light carrier.” 

Sadek winced. That was why that insignia had been so familiar. He turned to Kel. “So that’s how you got such a favorable deal when you got to the Gate with a crippled ship. You fell in with Sovereign.”  

“Why yes. They asked me very nicely not to publish this fact, of course. I have done so.” Kel turned his huge, milky eyes on every member of his crew. “I trust you will do also.” 

Sadek gritted his teeth. How could he begin to explain how much trouble that name meant, to one so alien to Reach customs? Sovereign Security Solutions was the largest and most notorious band of theoretically-legal hired guns in the Reach. They were on the right side in the War, but only because it was a rare chance to get big money contracts from the Confederated Navy. They were loyal to nothing but the bottom line, and were notorious for double-dealing. Here they were now, at the mercy of mercenaries who had none. 

Obviously, Sadek Sherburn did not keep the confidence of his employer, at least not forever. Sovereign’s interest in the dealings of Traveler and its crew are no longer a secret. Mr. Sherburn sent in an additional account to explain that yes, he and his mates had something to do with Sovereign’s new in-house-designed strike interceptor, a radical, translucent-hulled design they call the Blade Dancer, built mainly with licensed Savitri components. The Blade Dancer is supposedly as maneuverable as an Incarnation Coronach in the void despite being several times heavier (much of this weight being long-haul mission optimization features), and it incorporates an advanced metalens laser system for its main armament that theoretically can fire at almost any angle without the need for a turret. 

Within days of the public reveal, we had datasphere queries about the relationship of this craft to Kel’s people and their strange method of constructing starships. Evidently, those who knew Sadek’s contact information sent him similar queries. 

The events of this account are some months old by now. Sadek would probably not have dared to send this in closer to the actual events. 

 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Coronach for a Spin

2953-09-17 – Tales from the Service: A Coronach for a Spin 

The landing locks released with a shuddering clunk, and in Callisto Seyer's vision-helmet, the landing pad began to fall away. There was no sensation of motion at all; the gravitics on the sleek, almost alien Coronach were tuned precisely. In most strike rigs Callisto had flown, there was a brief sensation of motion with dust-off, quickly dampened by the computer. 

“Clear of the deck.” Callisto gently nudged the controls to one side, and the hangar outside her began swinging past. Noramlly there was an autopilot routine to line a strike craft up with Star Coracle’s high-gee launch tube, but the autopilot in the Coronach was the stock one, barely reconfigured, and it offered very little automation. From what Callisto had been told, routines like this were things the intended cybernetic pilot was supposed to code into their implants rather than their craft’s systems, making various tweaks to optimize their experience that would carry over from rig to rig. 

Fortunately, manual launches were no problem, even in the most ungainly strike craft. The funnel-shaped launch system entrance was well marked with colorful markers that helped her center the direction indicator on all axes, and a gentle nudge with the maneuvering thrusters edged her forward until the first of the magnetic coils was all around her. The techs had tested that the system wouldn’t destroy the Coronach, of course, but it was designed for such launches. The delicate wing-like blades on either side of the craft were nonferrous to minimize stresses put on them, and the inertial isolation system would prevent anything – pilot included – from getting torqued beyond its intended spec. 

“I’m in the slot.” Callisto took her hands off the controls and idled the gravitic drive. “Lock the breach.” 

“Copy, Zenith. Launch in thirty.” 

Callisto could just turn her head enough that the screens in the helmet showed her the great armored hatch of the launch tube sealing behind her. A moment later, the air was pumped out of the tube. This took a while; because there was no hurry to launch, the ship was pumping the air into tanks for later re-use rather than simply opening the outer hatch and venting it into space. 

“Five seconds.” The launch controller announced. “Four. Three. Two. Coils powering up...” 

There was once again no sensation of motion, even though the brightly painted interior of the launch tube blurred and vanished into blackness. No lights on the rudimentary status HUD the techs had rigged up so much as flickered out of green as Callisto was hurled outward into the void at several hundred meters per second. After waiting a three-count, she brought up power on the gravitic drive and brought the craft into a wide, graceful turn. It responded intuitively to the controls, even though these were a haphazard affair. 

“Everything feels fine out here but my back.” Callisto put the craft on a great, gentle orbit around the company mothership to find the recovery tug, which was supposed to be waiting for her. “Where’s the tug?” 

“A few clicks dead ahead of Coracle.” Alfred Demirci, not the normal ops controller, responded. “Can’t you pick up his transponder?” 

Callisto cast about her heads-up display for a few seconds, until she spotted the blue rectangle labeled NURSEMAID. She noticed other symbols, too – the large blue circle at the center of the carrier, and the distance-faded ellipses indicating the transponders of local merchant traffic. “I have him now. Visuals and situation display being overlaid is going to take some getting used to.” 

Less than a minute later, Callisto was engaging reverse thrust to match velocities with the recovery tug. Normally, this too was an autopilot routine, but again, there was nothing in the Coronach’s computer for it. The boxy craft came into visual range, and she had to admit it was better to be sitting inside the Incarnation interceptor than to be watching it approach from an unarmed utility vessel. Coronachs had a nasty reputation, especially among patchily-equipped mercenary units. Demirci Defense was better prepared than most, perhaps, but Gallagher was probably getting a good opportunity to visualize his worst nightmare. 

“You pass a visual inspection, Zenith.” Gallagher reported. “Let’s get on with this test. I hear they’ve even got a target for you to blast if you feel up to it.” 

“Let’s see how this goes, Nursemaid.” Callisto brought up the mission parameters on her HUD, which had been filled with all the steps of the test flight. The first was an agility test, operating both the thrusters and the gravitic drive in combat-style maneuvers. That might almost be fun – as long as nothing went wrong. “I’m not sure I trust this thing yet.” 

“Don’t blame you.” Gallagher chuckled nervously. “Let’s get this over with.” 

Callisto sighed, tried to stretch her back only to find the hard wall of the upper housing prevented it, then signaled to ops that she was ready to start the test routine. Her ten minutes couldn’t be over soon enough. 

Callisto also attached part of her after-action report on the subjective handling characteristics of the modified Coronach to her account. Her report indicates that the bad cockpit ergonomics of the initial package would have made pilot endurance a serious problem. Maneuvering response to the hand-held controls was excellent, though possibly a bit too sensitive, as even adjusting oneself in the cockpit often caused a control input to be detected. 

According to her, there were only three flights with the initial version of the retrofit, after which the Coronach was pulled apart and re-modified with a new version much resembling the production version. The maneuvering responsiveness was toned down a bit, and the automation (mentioned in the account as a problem) was improved by adding extra computing power to the helmet system to take the place of the intended cybernetics. 

Most importantly, the new package freed up most of the space lost in the initial version by using a much smaller and more specialized control processing system, and attaching it to the upper cowling rather than to the floor of the pilot’s compartment. 

I’m still not sure flying a retrofitted Coronach would be a comfortable experience – Callisto suggests the ergonomics are still a problem even now – but at least it’s good enough that pilots can be in that cockpit for several hours at a time without physical distress. 

Details

Tales from the Service: A Coronach in Trials

2953-09-10 – Tales from the Service: A Coronach in Trials 

As the main test pilot for the Demirci Defense retrofit system, Callisto Seyer reported many amusing stories about the various iterations of the package that the company went through over the months it took to produce the final product. These, though often embarrassing for someone and funny, required significant technical knowledge to understand, so I am not going to publish them to the main text feed. I will post some of the more interesting ones on our network’s main datasphere hub, especially those which came with pictures or diagrams (there were several of these). 

I suspect that this account was given to us as a slantwise advertisement for the retrofit package as much as for any other reason. I approve of clever marketing along these lines, but I should note that neither Nojus nor myself nor any other Cosmic Background employee, nor the company at large, has received any money for publishing this account. It is interesting enough to permit Demirci its free advertising. 

Callisto Seyer emerged from the pilots’ locker room wearing her usual skin-tight silver flight suit, to find her boss waiting in the ready room. Normally, she was wearing a reaction harness and other equipment over the body-hugging pressure suit, but none of that would fit inside the Coronach, so she had left it all in her locker. 

Alfred Demirci’s eyes absently roved up and down Callisto’s body, a slight smile tugging at his lips. She was not used to being sized up that way, being short, slight, and pinched compared to the bombshell curves and glittering smile of Yvette Gladstone, the squadron’s executive officer. For this flight, though, Callisto was going out alone. She was in nobody’s shadow now, and she rather hated how good it felt to have that attention on her. 

Demirci shook his head and looked up toward the status board, where only one status wireframe appeared. The Coronach’s ovoid body and long, blade-like wings looked strange up there, where normally six or seven blocky Navy-surplus gunships and interceptors appeared. “The techs are ready for you.” He held up a data slate. “I’d send this with you, but-” 

“Even if I could fit it in that cockpit, I’d never be able to read it with the display helmet on.” Callisto shrugged. “It’s only a test flight. You can walk me through the checklist once I’m out in the black.” She didn’t add, if she got that far; the techs’ work retrofitting the Coronach for a normal pilot was so haphazard that it was very possible she’d never get the thing off the pad. 

“Right.” Demirci nodded. “Take it slow out there. We’ve no idea what the tolerances-” 

“Boss, remember how many credits you had to promise to get me to agree to even get in that thing?” Callisto stepped toward him, crossing her arms. “I won’t break your damned toy.” 

“Another reminder wouldn’t hurt.” Demirci sighed. “This could make us both rich, Seyer.” 

“But it can only make one of us dead.” Callisto arched one eyebrow. “Is Gallagher ready?” 

Eric Gallagher, the main pilot for the company’s recovery tug, was supposed to go out with Callisto. His rig launched from the service hangar farther aft, which was somewhat roomier but didn’t have the forward hangar’s rapid combat deployment system. 

“He launched a couple minutes ago, reporting a green board. He’ll be on station before you’re sealed up in the Coronach.” 

“Good.” This was of course no strong guarantee of Callisto’s safety; the recovery tug didn’t have the right ports to interface with the Coronach if it were in distress, nor did the Coronach have any sort of airlock with which she could disembark and join Gallagher in the tug’s crew cabin. The only way to exit the Coronach was to have the techs unbolt the cockpit cover panel to let her out. If something really bad happened, it would be a question of whether her reserve oxygen supply lasted longer than it took Gallagher to grapple her and tow her back to the pressurized hangar. Naturally, there wasn’t room for a large atmo cartridge, nor would she have the elbow room to swap the small cartridge in her suit for another. 

There being no need for a proper briefing, Demirci led Callisto through the low tunnel terminating in the armored blast doors that opened onto the main hangar deck. As these opened in front of them, Callsito saw the Coronach gleaming black like some exotic predatory insect on its pad. Its lines were beautiful, in a sinister sort of way. Knowing she’d be flying it in a few minutes didn’t help. If that chitinous hunter was going to devour anyone today, she was on the menu. 

The techs clustered around the Coronach already had the dorsal paneling open where Callisto would have to climb into the cramped cockpit space, and a rather sorry-looking metal gantry arched between the forward-swept wing sections meant that neither she nor they would need to climb its smooth hull. At the approach of the pilot and the company commander, several of the techs backed away, and others began unhooking the various leads and hoses which connected the craft to its pad. 

Callisto nudged her employer’s arm. “I want that money transferred as soon as I’m off the deck.” 

Demirci shrugged. “I paid the ten thousand while you were still putting on your flight suit.” He looked nervous, though that was probably concern for his valuable captured strike rig than for a far-more-replaceable pilot. “So I guess it’s too late to back out.” 

“It was too late to back out a long time ago, boss.” Callisto chuckled as she walked forward and up the short set of gantry stairs. 

It took very little time to go through the pre-launch procedure, because there wasn’t any defined pre-launch procedure for a Coronach. The techs made a few final readings, then helped Callisto into the awkward position she would have to remain in for the duration of the flight. It was a lying down position, a bit like the posture one would take riding one of those fast, agile street hoverbikes. Her legs barely fit around the squarish computer unit in the middle of the space, which had been covered with a thin pad. 

As soon as Callisto was in position, one of the techs lowered the display helmet onto her head. At first, this blinded her, but when it finished its startup procedure she found that it showed her the view forward, as if her eyes were in the front of the Coronach. Turning her head, she saw that the display in front of her eyes showed her outside the craft in every direction she could look. With a thumbs-up gesture, she indicated the system was working. 

The tech patted her on the back, then she felt the pad on the inside of the dorsal hatch press into her shoulder blades, pushing her whole body down. The craft shuddered as the cockpit latches clicked shut. Blindly, Callsito’s hands felt for the controls. She found them all within reach, barely. A few taps brought up the heads-up display, showing the tiny launch’s various system status indicators. 

“Finalizing datalink.” A strangely accented computer voice whispered into Callisto’s ears. “Connected to tactical comm-net.” 

“Can you hear me, Zenith?” This was, obviously, Callsito’s flight call-sign. 

“Affirmative, Ops.” Callisto turned her head to verify that the techs and their gantry were well clear. “Bringing up the gravitics. Wish me luck.” 

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Tales from the Service: A Coronach for Hire

2953-09-03 – Tales from the Service: A Coronach for Hire 

Callisto Seyer shook her head and crossed her arms. “No way, boss. I’m not getting into that thing. It’s a damned deathtrap.” 

“Come on, Callisto.” Alfred Demirci held out his hands. “The techs need a test pilot and you’re the only one we’ve got who will fit.” 

Callisto cast her eyes on the egg-shaped fuselage and curving, blade-thin weapons pylons of the Coronach on landing pad number five. The company had reeled the thing in during a salvage sweep late the prior year, mostly intact, its pilot dead of apparently sudden decompression. Nine months later, though, it still hadn’t flown, except for a few fly-by-wire systems checks. They’d quickly learned that one of the ways The Incarnation had made its flagship interceptor so small and agile was doing away with physical controls and relying on a direct digital interface through the pilot’s implants. There wasn’t even a viewpanel; the pilot’s vision was purely through the craft’s outer cameras, mediated again by neural implant software. 

Demirci Defense was, as mercenary outfits went, reasonably well funded, though, and Captain Demirci could afford some of the best techs money could buy. They’d quickly rigged up a compact set of controls and a display helmet to show the pilot their surroundings and their sensor plot in one integrated view, just as a real Coronach pilot probably saw it.  

They’d tested the setup on the pad several times, and all the control elements responded, but none of the techs could squeeze inside the equipment-cramped cockpit shell sufficiently to seal it over them for a test flight. 

That, of course, left Callisto, the smallest pilot in the company. Even she wasn’t sure she’d fit, certainly not comfortably. If she did fit, no doubt the skipper would take away the roomy cockpit of her De Rochs Oberon gunship and force her to fly it into combat. 

There was some appeal to the Coronach, of course – it had the handling characteristics of a top-end Core Worlds racer, and a nose-gun that would make even the biggest gunship proud. The idea of sitting hunched over in a tiny metal egg for hours and hours just wasn’t worth the few minutes of combat superiority, though, at least not to Callisto. 

“Relieve the hull and give me another half meter to stretch out.” She scowled. “Then I’ll think about it.” 

She knew of course that this couldn’t be done. The cockpit of the Coronach was small because critical systems surrounded it on all sides. Even the armored hatch allowing the pilot to enter was run through with systems cabling and electrical conduits to the point one couldn’t even start the gravitic drive with the hatch open. 

“Just take it out for a spin. Ten minutes to get the techs some data.” Demirci pressed his hands together. “I’ll hire a dwarf or an Atro’me to fly it into combat.” 

“Ten minutes for something to go wrong?” Callisto turned away. “With no ejection system, and no way to even bail out if there’s a problem?” 

“I’ll send out the tug. Travis will be right behind you the whole time.” 

This was little comfort, of course, since the recovery tug couldn’t actually open the Coronach’s hatch to let her out if she was trapped. It would have to run her back into the hangar and let the techs pry her out, and by then she’d probably be quite dead. 

Evidently realizing that she knew the risks well enough to know the presence of the tug was not an effective safeguard, Demirci sighed. “Fine. How about money?” 

Callisto winced. In the end, that was the language which could make her suspend all her reservations. “How much?” 

“The test data for a ten minute flight is worth at least fifteen thousand credits.” Demirci hesitated. “This thing, it’s more than a prestige piece. If we can be the first to market on a functional conversion kit for these things-” 

Callisto smiled. It was only too like Alfred Demirci to be thinking of turning a short-term windfall into a long-term war profiteering racket. He was probably right; how many captured Coronachs were gathering dust at that very moment because no self-respecting human would intermesh electronics with his nervous system? 

“Fifteen thousand for the flight.” Callisto spun around, holding up two fingers. “And two percent of profit from the kits, if any. In writing, filed on the datasphere, before I so much as put my flight suit on.” 

Demirci was silent for several seconds. “If you’re getting cut in on the profits... Ten thousand for the flight. Option for more test flights at ten thousand each, safety permitting, your veto on safety grounds only.” 

Callisto stuck out her hand. “Done, boss.” She would probably regret that, but ten thousand credits for less than an hour of flight-suit time, possibly repeating, was enough to make her put up with almost any unpleasantness. “But I still ain’t taking the thing out to fight.” 

“Certainly not yet.” Demirci took Callisto’s hand. "Besides, by the time we’ve got the kinks worked out, you might even like the thing." 

Callisto scowled. He was probably right about that, and she hated that he was. 

The ubiquity of the IN Coronach in battle spaces across the Coreward Frontier and Sagittarius Frontier means that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of the craft have been captured in working order, both by the Confederated Navy and by its auxiliaries. Many thousands of tons of spare parts have also been acquired, enough to keep many of these craft operational for years of combat. 

This being a resource that was otherwise untapped, after Confederated analysts learned all they could from these machines, the Navy elected to sell off most of its Coronach stocks to mercenaries and Coreward Frontier militia squadrons earlier this year. The first two Confederated squadrons, one mercenary and one a local militia, to enter full service with Coronachs certified with their craft last week. Both have their machines modified with the Demirci Defense Coronach retrofit package, purchase of which the Navy is heavily subsidizing. I have heard it said that at least four other Coronach squadrons (probably all militia) are preparing to enter operations with this captured equipment, but this is not an official number. There may be more. 

[N.T.B. - I’m not sure these squadrons will ever be front line units. The Coronach is fragile for a combat unit, and the strike crew I’ve talked to would keep their Pumas and Magpies even if they had the choice, trusting in these rugged craft to keep them alive even against more maneuverable, well-armed foes.] 

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