Task Force Mars - Kevin Dockery [5]
“So you’re going to check out the FTL drive next?” he asked Carstairs, remembering that he wasn’t the only one facing challenges.
“Can’t wait to take this thing through deep space!” the captain replied, apparently thrilled at the prospect. “But we’ll need authorization. This is the first intrastellar engine installed on a human-built ship. I’m sure that the JCS is going to have inspections from stem to stern and back again before they’ll let me activate the drive.”
He looked a little crestfallen at the prospect, and Jackson had to sympathize. After all, the SEALS lieutenant was in a similar situation. He was confident of many things: He knew that the sixteen men of his platoon were the best soldiers that the United States of America—and, by extension, the planet Earth—had to offer. They had completed nearly a year of intensive training, including lots of work in zero gravity at the old International Space Station. Until recently, the ISS had been the largest human outpost in space.
All that had changed with the arrival of the Shamani fleet some three years earlier. The aliens had shocked the people on planet Earth when they had first arrived. They looked very human, except for the odd colors of the irises of their eyes, which ranged from indigo to bright crimson. They had come in peace and offered many new technologies. Prominent among them had been the PODS systems of living modules, the “beach balls” that made up the great base of SATSTAR1. They also had provided the inertial dampening technology that protected the passengers of this ship from the crushing effects of acceleration and deceleration, with forces ranging as high as 25G. Most significantly, they finally had parted with the secret of the interstellar drives that allowed their ships to leap through the vault of space from one star to another. It was the same technology that had been installed in the Pegasus, the technology that Captain Carstairs was so eager to employ.
The very origin of the SEALS, in fact, had been prompted by the Shamani’s arrival. All the men in Jackson’s platoon had come from the famous United States Navy SEAL Teams, the elite commandos who, since the days of the Vietnam War nearly a hundred years earlier, had fought with skill and élan in nautical, airborne, and land-based operations. The SEALS were already used to working in a hostile, almost weightless environment with their continuous underwater operations and use of artificial breathing systems. They were a natural choice for expanding America’s combat capabilities into space. With the arrival of the Shamani and knowledge of their galactic empire, the SEAL regimen had been expanded to include space operations for a select few operatives, the best of the best. Jackson and his men were the first to have completed the new training regimen. These, the elite of the elite, were SEALS.
He and Carstairs would work well together, he was certain. The captain had proudly showed him around the space frigate. The ship was sleek and fast and boasted an array of projectile and missile weapons.
Now, as the frigate returned to SATSTAR1, the collection of beach balls actually looked like, if not home, at least a familiar base. Even so, Jackson looked forward to getting his men installed aboard the navy ship. Pegasus was too large to enter the station’s dock, but she mated to an exterior air lock that would hold her fast and allow for easy passage back and forth as well as the replenishment of fuel and provisions.
Jackson was the first man off the frigate, and he was greeted by one of his NCOs, Chief Bosun’s Mate Harris, as soon as he came into the docking back on the station.
“One of the men had an accident, sir. Chief Ruiz went drifting