#SD03C to the Rescue!
Most people when told of the Courier, conjure
in their minds the image of a whitish beast cutting defenceless police
Vipers to pieces. While that might be true, it is also true that the
same characteristics that make the Courier a great military spacecraft,
also allow it to perform a mission that requires a military amount of
precision flying, nerves of steel and 105% current on accelerator fields:
deep space search and rescue. In fact, the Courier is the preferred
SAR vehicle throughout Imperial space because of its high speed, high
endurance and sturdy construction. SAR squadrons throughout the Empire
have saved countless lives from certain death when their ship engines
failed in midflight, or worse, while approaching a starport or orbital
station.
However, saving lives is not restricted to the SAR folks. Even
I have had the opportunity to rescue a bunch of jarheads in a Mod 3
System Defence Courier, a machine designed for death and destruction,
rather than SAR.
This is how it happened. Some years back, I was with the Home
Guard folks in Olcanze, 3rd System Defence Sqn. We were flying the Mod
3 Courier, a particularly nasty version that had the hyperdrive removed
to accomodate a 100 MW heavy laser. Not to be confused with the commercially
avaiable 100 MW beamer; it's like comparing a candle to a plasma cutting
torch. Our unit's mission was to toast anything hostile less than 100
AU's from Olcanze, with priority given to troop landing ships, orbital
bombardment ships and capital ships, in that order. As such we would
often train with visiting fleets, where they would play the agressor
force trying to land marines on Gonzalez or toast it from orbit, while
we were the good guys (and gals) trying to send them to hell.
Now, as you may or may not know, a capital ship isn't the most
agile craft. In fact, even though their engines are the size of a Courier,
they are capable of 1.5 gees forward, at best. This means that for such
a vessel to take the "minimum amount of time" route to its
target would be suicide: big, slow, lumbering along a very predictible
trajectory, it would be instantaneously swarmed by the defenders and
blown away. Therefore some tricks are required.
It could, for example, take a trajectory towards its target and
randomize it. However, its low acceleration means that its trajectory
would either not be random enough or it would arrive at their target
too late and face a formidable and organised planetary defence that
would "de-orbit" it right away. So, the twisted minds of our
dreadnought captains (re)discovered the slingshot maneuver: get close
to a large mass and shot past it in hyperbolic orbit. You can put that
celestial mass between you and the pursuers and while they can't see
you, you can adjust your trajectory so you can exit on a (almost) totally
random vector and catch them by surprise. While they frantically accelerate
to intercept you, do a few avoidance maneouvers, brake a little, do
another slingshot near your target and while you're at it, drop your
bombs or landing craft. Brake some more and return to stable orbit while
your payload finishes/has finished all resistance. Sounds simple, eh?
The only problem with this is that to achieve enough "slingshot"
effect you need a) a medium gas giant, anything smaller won't do, and
b) get real close to it, possibly scrape its atmosphere a little to
alter your trajectory more than it is possible with your main engines
and achieve more "randomisation". In doing this, chances are
some thing could go wrong and you will end up in a spectacular fireball
at many hundreds of kilometers per second.
Well, that week we were practicing just that. HMS "Napoleon"
was the agressor force. She was a long range cruiser, converted to troop
carrier and hauled some 15,000 Imperial Marines. Her job was to reach
Gonzalez and drop her marines. Our job was to prevent that.
She hyperspaced in from Sohoa, and immediately headed for Olcanze
5, the biggest gas giant in the system. We prepared the classic anti-slingshot
defence: we split up into two groups. 33 ship including myself would
try to intercept "Napoleon" from behind while the rest, 52
Couriers, guarded what we considered to be the most likely exit vectors
from the slingshot.
Anyway, it looked like they would miss the fun as we had closed
to within 12 million klicks in less than two days and it seemed we would
catch up with her either during the slingshot or soon after. However
this meant that we also had to sweep around Olcanze 5 and it made us
(me at least) nervous. Altough we were taught this maneouver at the
Academy and we practiced it a lot, following a troop carrier at 300
km/sec less than 500 kilometers from the cloud tops of Olcanze 5 or
even in the atmosphere caused my blood pressure to elevate significantly.
As she was plunging closer and closer to 5 with us trailing not
so far behind now, almost in weapons range in fact, her skipper got
nervous. It was quite clear to him that he was likely to lose this exercise.
Failing in an exercise simulating your primary mission was definitely
a no-no. So he decided to do a "wet" slingshot i.e. enter
the atmosphere of Olcanze 5. When we realised that we started to curse
him but we followed anyway. If he managed to add some major delta vee
to his already impressive 424 km/sec while we were playing it safe above,
he would evade us and the other fellows would get him. If they would.
Worst scenario, he could feint us all and reach Gonzalez.
As he was closing fast on the cloud tops, something began to look
wrong to me. I did a prediction of his current trajectory and realised
(with considerable horror, I might add) that he wasn't "slingshoting"
anymore; he was diving straight into 5, faster and faster each second.
Just about when I was going to yell my excitement over to my wingmen,
the skipper came on the emergency net: "Bravo group, this is Napoleon,
we have lost main engines and we are on a collision course with 5. ETA
to impact is 22 minutes. Please advise, over."
Please advise? PLEASE ADVISE?!?!? What am I, a miracle worker?
These folks were as good as dead, I realised one microsecond after hearing
"lost main engines". Even if they used their escape pods,
those puny lifeboats couldn't possibly add enough delta vee to miss
Olcanze 5, let alone its upper atmosphere. We would have to soon start
accelerating away from 5 ourselves if we were to avoid Napoleon's fate.
15,000 jarheads would fry because of an ambitious jerk.
Then Keir, one of my wingmen came up on the net: "Joanna,
this shit's got five universal docking ports, we could send five ships
to dock with it". "No way, Keir" I replied " we'd
need 20 minutes at least just to formate on it. It'll hit the upper
atmosphere the minute we dock with it. Besides, where are you going
to put 3000 jarheads and 1/5th of the crew?". Keir came up again,
his voice distorted by digital static. 5 was really close now. "Listen,
Joanna, we don't load them up. We lock ourselves onto it and use our
engines to maneouver it away from 5. We'll drink some methane from 5
but we can stomach it.". WHAT?!?! "Listen Keir, are you insane?
Those docks aren't load bearing structures! And besides that thing's
velocity vector will be way towards 5 before we ever have a chance of
reaching it. We'll all burn up!". "The computer says it can
be done." insisted Keir. Just when I was about to say "I'll
think about it" I realised I couldn't do that. It was yes or no,
right now. Well, why not? At least I'll get the Legion of Honour. Posthumously.
"Okay. 5, 7,8 and 12 come with me. The rest, start thrusting NOW.".
After a few seconds, I heard a very distorted "Roger", and
saw 5,7,8 and 12 light their propulsion and accelerate towads Napoleon
while the rest oriented themselves perpendicular to 5 and fired their
engines.
The interference fron 5's magnetic field was so strong now, that
we couldn't warn Napoleon on what we were up to. We hoped the jarheads
would not try to launch the escape pods. We prayed they would all freeze
with fear. Somehow, they did.
The first streaks of orange plasma started flying around us by
the time we finished docking. We even lowered our landing gear and fired
anchoring pins to get a better grip. 5 was huge; in fact it wasn't a
sphere anymore: it looked as if we were only a few kilometers up.
For the next 20 minutes we continuously ran our engines at 110%
trying to prevent 20,000 tons of spaceship from hitting the denser layers
of gas below us. We saw nothing outside except an orange-yellow curtain:
the plasma generated by our descent. The whole thing was shaking and
we were only managing about .3 gees away from 5. Finally we started
gaining altitude, and the plasma outside started getting thinner. When
we emerged, we were about 200 km/sec slower.
Napoleon's captain was kicked out of the Navy so fast, he got
warp disorientation. As for me, I didn't get the Legion of Honour. I
got promoted though.