The Black

1st Lt James “BigMac” Mackenzie, “Houston Docking clearance, ESS- Concord; information Juliet; request push back for departure as filed.”

Mac always had to restrain a chuckle when contacting “Houston”. The monstrous centrifugal section that contained the HAB section of Houston Orbital International loomed in familiar silence over the canopy of his Concord “LEAP” (Light-speed Experimental Aerospace Propulsion) craft as she lay to her moorings along the central core. The LEAP program was not old, less than 5 years removed for the Great Sol War of 2365 between Earth and Mars. Mac had seen more than his share of horrors of combat in the Black of that conflict. He shook his head; he needed focus not…

“Concord, Houston Clearance; you are cleared as filed; pushback on your mark; departure vector two five seven, mark three niner one. maintain 500kph until clear of HAB-D. Once clear, direct Pandora MOA approved pilot’s discretion, good hunting Mac, I’ll keep your seat at the Golden Arches warm,” Houston Control shattered his trip down memory lane, none too soon by Mac’s reckoning.

Mac almost rolled his eyes as he read back and got confirmed he had his Clearance. Clint never passed a chance at a reference. He could practically see his former Weapons officer turned Orbital STC controller’s shit eating grin as he heard “read-back correct good hunting.”

Mac initiated push back, the now familiar hiss and shudder of the umbilical, containing shore power, shutting down and breaking away from his vessel. His cockpit’s HUD indications exchanged icons. Concord was now fully transferred to her twin Fusion Core power plants. A familiar singular thump shuddered through her as the mooring clamps deactivated, imparting gentle separation velocity in now perfect silence. Mac’s hands moved with practiced gentleness. Concord responded to his touch, slipping from her birth with the dangerous grace her lineage demanded. She stalked her way through the HAB rings external diameter “no wake” zone, under maneuvering thrusters alone.

Lethality was her heritage; however, science was the mission at hand. Mac could feel her asking. The low whine of the main drive at high idle begged to be loosed upon the void not unlike a Belgian Mal awaiting the toss of her favorite toy. As They eased past the final marker for HAB-D’s outer limits and Mac Obliged; smoothly swinging her head ‘round to heading as he began feeding power into her final drive. her engines roared to life with barely tamed grace and Concord leaped for the testing area.

This couldn’t get any better… Mac Caught himself humming an ancient tune from his grandpa’s media collection,

“take me out, to the black...

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

… tell them I ain’t comin’ back..”

Mac hummed as he settled into his cockpit chair. He scratched his nose on the inside of his helmet where he had taped a bit of Velcro. Concord was a modified version of the Terran Republics TALON class two-man heavy fighters. His Uncle once told him she very much looked like the lethal love child between an F22 and an SR71. Despite being half again as large as the venerable black bird, the TALONS were the smallest interplanetary rated military craft involved in the GSW.

Their job had traditionally been deep space stealth escort/infiltration. Even with her skin currently painted in bright NASA colors, Concord needed keep her ADS-B transponder active or she would be invisible to almost all passive sensors outside of 1000m; and as far as 10km for active scanning. Those numbers might seem like a lot… but that was well inside of “knife fighting range” in the vastness of the black, and the TALON squadrons were used to extensive effect in escort duties and strike missions on both sides, including some rare engagements with each other during the sieges on both LUNA and Titan respectively. Concord had kept her claws as a matter of tradition and testing. She was dressed up in her Sunday best for this mission:

• 25-AIM 12x/iff’s (hyper-sparrows). These little murder fish had proven that in a vacuum, supped up fox2’s with IFF were not going anywhere in aerospace combat. It turns out that it is incredibly hard to shed heat in a vacuum.

• Phoenix 9s’s, 10 of them to be exact half a traditional payload and half were of an “anti-ship, Strategic” payload for delivering warheads of the nuclear variety to larger enemy capital ships. The big change the new Phoenix missiles had over the old were their ability to be fired as a manually guided missile as well as a fox3.

• Her pride however was her twin GAU28- Rotary Mac Cannons. 3000rpm each of magnetically accelerated 34mm tungsten hate traveling at 1 percent of the speed of light. The 34mm GAU or “34Gau” in common shorthand, was essentially a 30mm tungsten cored steel dart with a 4mm titanium alloy sabot.

Everything concord had on her today either fired from a retractable port, or from internal launching bays. All this ordinance, including the nukes, were aboard because of the slip drive. Before the GSW, there was very little need for faster than light travel. Overpopulation, however, had led to a war that almost ended humanity as a civilization. In the end, the war showed humanity one thing, we were running out of space, and therefore time. The Slip drive was the answer to that dilemma, and no one knew what FTL would do to... well… anything.

Mac was pulled from his revelries to the tune of a beep that had alerted him to his arrival at the Military Operations Area (MOA) known as “Pandora”. Swapping to the LEAP secure frequencies, Mac straightened in his seat ‘time to go to work’.

“LEAP control, this is ESS-Condor mission code fife niner three seven Juliet Gulf. Entering Pandora on station monitoring point tree seven. How copy?” Mac was gone, only Lt Mackenzie and his infuriatingly smug airline captains voice was left. After all, It was go time.

“Condor, this is LEAP, ADS-B and code received and confirmed. New heading of 115/330 and accelerate/maintain a 14g acceleration profile please.”

Lt Mackenzie’s hands followed their instructions and Concord Howled to life, baying into the void as she Leapt forward. ‘Thank god they figured out inertial dampers’ passed through Mac's mind as he was pressed into his seat at a more sedately 2.5 G’s. “Control, Concord: on heading, on profile, beginning slip-space drive spool up. “

A deep hum reverberated through Concord's bones. An experimental monster, created of the joint minds of a newly reconciled Terra and Mars began to stir. After a few minutes, that monster awakened.

“LEAP control, Concord: slipstream board is green, internal board green Concord ready for test commence countdown” came Lt Mackenzie’s voice of practiced calm.

“Concord, LEAP: one minute, sync countdown… now, T-57 and counting ………. 30 seconds.” Lt Mackenzie took a deep breath, reaching for the secondary lever next to his throttle quadrants.

‘Burn the land, boil the sea’ he hummed as he listened to the countdown. “5-4-3-2-1 commend jump.”

‘You can’t take the sky from me’ from behind the LT’s professionally stern face Mac finished the line, and jumped…

—————————————————————————————————————————————-

two minutes went by, then two hours, at the third hour Clint was scrambling search and rescue cursing and sweating to all the god he could think of, that if the last words to his best friend were a Mac Donald’s joke, he would hunt them down, and strangle them himself.

By the 12th hour the search was done. No debris, only a slight trail of rapidly dissipating Gama particles from the slip space wake was all they found.