Wing Commander #07 False Color by William Forstchen (novels for students TXT) 📗

He'd served as Wing Commander on her maiden voyage, and back then he'd been critical of the old girl. Terra's desperate need for carriers at a crucial stage of the war had prompted some unknown naval procurement officer to make the decision to take nine transports under construction and convert them in midstream into escort carriers, and the compromise design had been less than efficient in a lot of ways. But he'd come to love the makeshift carrier. On that first tour he'd loved and lost Svetlana . . . carried out the deep-penetration raid on Kilrah . . . seen the captain and bridge crew killed when a Kilrathi missile took out her bridge, leaving Bondarevsky to take command and lead the battered carrier out of enemy territory.

Tarawa had still been his for the Landreich expedition and at the Battle of Earth, too. It had been hard to give her up afterwards, when he took command of DesRon-67 and hoisted his broad pendant aboard the Coventry, harder still when he'd learned Tarawa had been crippled in a clash with the Kilrathi just a few weeks later. Bondarevsky had assumed she'd been scrapped . . . but here she was, after all these years, with a new name and new colors, but the same old Tarawa despite it all.

"She's a tricky approach," he said, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice. "The entrance to the flight deck is narrow . . ."

"The shuttle is yours, sir," Harper said, a twinkle in his eye. "Seeing as you're the old hand at this, and all." He released the joystick, and Bondarevsky tightened his grip around his own stick automatically.

"The shuttle is mine," he acknowledged. A thrill surged through him. It had been a long time since he'd had his own craft to handle and the flight deck of the old Tarawa inviting him to come home.

"Independence Alpha to Independence Landing Control." Bondarevsky spoke crisply into his flight suit radio mike, and the years fell away. "Ready for final approach now. Vectors are matched and I have you on my nayscreen."

"Roger, Alpha," the voice of the landing signals officer crackled in his ears. "You are go for final approach. Change vector and start your run when you're ready. Watch for traffic. Two Rapiers, outbound, one supply shuttle in holding orbit. Confirm please."

Bondarevsky checked his radar scope. "Roger that, Independence. I have all three on my scope. Commencing final approach maneuver . . . now."

Bondarevsky nudged the throttle and kicked in the steering jets to settle the shuttle into the groove that would bring her over the approach deck at the escort carrier's bow. He allowed himself a momentary frown as he was forced to overcorrect; a shuttle was a lot less responsive than a fighter, and he was out of practice in making a trap on a carrier deck with any bird at all.

The carrier was visible through the viewscreen now without computer enhancement, swelling as the shuttle swept towards her on a precisely calculated course. Bondarevsky could pick out her forward armament bristling around the approach deck, a quad-barreled neutron gun flanked by mass drivers and anti-torpedo batteries. But he didn't linger on the sight. There was too much to do to bring a small craft in on the deck of a carrier in space, and it took all of a pilot's attention to do it.

In the old days of atmospheric flight, aircraft carrier landings had been considered the most difficult operations a pilot could attempt, but now that carriers were used in deep space those old atmospheric fliers were commonly held to have had it easy. Despite advances in computers and electronics, it still took the inborn skill of a talented pilot to get exactly the right feel for handling a bird. And a zero-g approach under power was a hell of a lot harder to manage than an old-style aircraft carrier trap, with tiny differences in inertia or thrust adding up to giant-sized headaches for the pilot and the flight control crew alike.

"One degree starboard," the LSO told him calmly. "Reduce your angle of attack . . . good. Very nice, Alpha. Reverse thrusters . . . steady . . . Call the ball."

Bondarevsky studied the looming approach deck until he made out the shape of the Ehrenberger Optical Approach Signal above the entry port. It helped a pilot establish his final vector by giving him a set of lights to line up on. With a practiced eye he gauged his course. "Alpha, shuttle, ball, forty-three point seven percent," he said, identifying his craft's designation and type, the fact that he had the optical signal in sight, and the shuttle's power reserves, all by the book.

"Roger ball," came the imperturbable reply.

The shuttle was moving very slowly now as it closed toward the carrier. This was the trickiest part of a carrier landing. If the pilot didn't have a perfect line on the port, he'd plow straight into a bulkhead and destroy his bird . . . and a fair chunk of the carrier, too. Too much thrust was bad even if the alignment was perfect, because once through the opening you ran out of maneuvering room quickly inside. But too little speed had its own difficulties.

That, as Bondarevsky had often remarked to non-pilots in countless late-night drinking sessions, was why the flyboys got the big bucks and most of the glory.

He steered through the narrow opening of the carrier's entry port, remembering how he'd once regularly cursed the naval architect who had designed it. Passing through the energy airlock, the shuttle was abruptly in atmosphere, but Bondarevsky had anticipated the change in the boat's handling characteristics and caught her deftly. The transition through the barrier had killed most of his remaining forward momentum, and Bondarevsky eased her forward to make a smooth touchdown right in the center of the landing deck.

"Shuttle Alpha, on the deck," he announced. "Powering down main engines."

"Nice job,