Part one of "Piece of Cake", a Science Fiction tale

As I promised a Sci fI tale and as the header says this os part one of two. This is also the shortest as in 2,225 words.
Could have revised more but I did this l late afternoon, and I am tried. The rest of it will hopefully be in a couple of days. 

This is another old story of mine-over six years old-and one my favorites. I realized it's a little hard to revise these older stories with all I have learned about writing since I first wrote them. But it's more readable and enjoyable than the original version.



Piece Of Cake By L. E. Doggett


The tiny, one man ship slid through the clear section of space quietly. Nothing orbited even close to him, that included other ships. The tightness of his piloting space didn’t bother him, nor did the heavier than normal clothing of his flight suit.
Carlos Manqué had been told that that his ship would blend in with the surrounding space if anyone glanced its way. That would be equally true if they used their physical eyes or electronic eyes. He almost believed them. The lights on his control panel would not reach outside the ship even if he opened his blacked out cockpit cover. The comm band he used, for extreme emergencies only, didn’t squrk or hiss with back ground radiation. No way could it be picked up. His AI could talk to him, but only through the device in his skull.
The pilot glanced through his cockpit window at the surrounding space. He shivered but he knew that any cold he felt was his mind only. No way could he feel any cold with his flight suit on and inside the temperture controlled fighter. Even the air in this improved fighter tasted clear and very close to planet normal.
He could, however really see the hundreds of pinpoints of light with yellow dots and nickel size disks mixed in that bordered the system he was flying through. Those stars provided significant light for this region.
Carlos was proud he was able to fly this new ship. It was a streamlined, state of the art craft. A craft so new this was its first mission. Its paint actually was a special light absorbing material so black it was difficult to make it out even with the number of suns shining around it. He had seen it disappear in a darken hanger. He had known it sat in front of him but no shadow or dark blob gave it away. They had demonstrated how it even absorbed lidar blips and other sensor radiations.
He flew not only with radio silence but dark, all of his running were lights off. The cockpit was located on top right along the center beam, one quarter of the way back from the blunt nose.
Carlos sat in the cockpit encased in a thicker then normal flight suit. It was more of an armored extra vehicle suit then a flight suit, but that is what they called it. His suit’s helmet had a light amplifying feature, so he could make out everything around him-it even had very short range lidar and three separate lights.
At the moment his drives were on stand by, as were most of his controls, including full sensors and the few weapons he had. He was cruising with only passive sensors to cut his chance of detection. If the need arouse he could have full operation mode in a two seconds after the touch of three touch points. The new gravitiaonal thrusters steered his craft with little escaped radiation or gravity anomilies.
So far everything was going as planned. He glanced at the diagram of the ship set in the control panel; streamlined yet stocky looking. The ship was small, three feet shorter then the jet fighters from the Twenty-first century, he had studied in flight school. It was however twice as wider and twice as thick as the fuselage of the same air craft. He studied the outline again. It was a nice looking ship. The new fighter’s wings were stubby running most the length of each side. He had to step on one to exit the fighter. The section of the wing that connected the ship’s hull was half as thick as the craft. As they swept backwards their thickness narrowed to half its original.
He sat there calm, without a trace of sweat or nervous butterflies. Back when he received the assignment he had predicted to his friends-without even hinting at what he would fly or do with it, that it would be a piece of cake. He recalled the moment he had announced his special assignment. As usual his friends had been sitting at a table in the academy’s canteen. He and his friends were still considered cadets even though they had graduated from the space force academy a few weeks earlier. That meant, among other things, that they could not be in the officers canteen, or lounge and they did not belong in the enlisted men’s canteen. They were in a sort of no man’s land, not officially belonging to any group. So like most of those previous to them they stayed around the academy, while waiting for assignments where they could advance to the next level, full fledged officers.
Carlos had come rushing over to their table, barely able to contain himself. He had felt like jumping up and down, as well shouting. That would have caused a scene, as well as being non officer like, so he restrained himself. They were expected to act like full officers. After arriving at the table he just stood there, until someone asked him what was happening. He had answered by saying that nothing much was happening, he had just been to the bases’ commander's office.
That had taken a few seconds to sink in. Finally three of the six heads spun his way. Jacqueline had asked if that was what it sounded like, or had he gotten into trouble. He had broken into a large grin and Tony had said that by that smile it was what they thought. Everyone had started to talk at once, some congratulating him with others asking him what the assignment was and others asking if the outfit he had been assigned to needed any one else. When they had quieted down he looked around to make sure no one else was close, bent down over the table and spoke in a low voice explaining that he had been given a special assignment piloting a new experimental craft.
Brittany said that those assignments were always the toughest. He replied that he was the best pilot in their
graduating class and therefore it would be a piece of cake for him. They had gone to a real restaurant that night to celebrate. Three days later he had been called back to the commander's office and the full assignment had been explained to him. It was top secret so he had to keep his mouth shut tighter than a locked up flight computer. All he told his friends was that he had leave to be trained for his new assignment but that for him, it would be a piece of cake.
Two days later he left and was taken to another base for training in this new craft. He had been surprised how small it was. It wasn’t the first one man fighter he had flown but it was definitely the smallest. Years of research had gone into condensing various components. They had even changed the shape of some so that they would fit into the space left for them. That was one thing he didn’t like about the ship. Every bit of space was crammed full of electronics and such. If part of one system blew up, it could take two or three other components with it. He had been assured that certain parts had been modified to make sure they would not explode and that others had an armored covering which should protect them if something next to them fragmented or blew up. He didn’t like the words “should” and “make sure they would not explode”. Devices and humans had a bad habit of doing things they should not.
The ship did not have much in the way of weapons just two double lasers and a larger maser just a little bigger then the lasers. The maser was on a turret located on the belly. The lasers were stationary and located at the front portion of each wing. It did have strong shielding though and dozens of anti-missile rockets and electronic defenses. He would have the shields turned off for the mission however. The little ship’s main ordinance was located on its belly. Usually it would carry four ship killer missiles, or eight of the smaller ones, but this time it had something special.
The design and building of this prototype had finished significantly ahead of schedule for a change, so High Admiral Jackson had decided to use it for this. It would show what the new fighter could do. How it could be used. That was why after just the basics of training, mostly simulators and actually piloting the ship three times, he now piloted it in stealth mode.
Even with passive sensors he could see his target sitting in a parking orbit. There were a lot of smaller craft flitting around it. Some were patrol ships guarding the new ship, while others probably were cargo shuttles. There were also civilian craft and other patrol ships on guard paths further out. With just the passive sensors it was hard to be sure which ships were which at this range though. This was true with his eyes also since even with the magnification mode on his helmet, the ships were just moving pinpoints of light at this distance. He would be able to tell with full sensors of course but they would be able to detect it if he “painted” the target with them. With so many other ships, including quite a few civilian ships, it might be a little hard to detect just another set of sensors but with the heighten security around the target bit would not be worth the chance. Also his would be military grade sensors which would attract even more attention. Some alert sensor officer could follow the beams back to their source, him. That would not do at all.
His mission was deceptively simple, get in launch his special ordinance at this new ship about to begin its maiden cruise and get out all without being detected. A piece of cake, as he had told everyone. That was why he had started this mission a large distance from the planet and after building up his speed he had turned off the drives. They could not be detected if they were on stand by. Now he was coasting using his inertia and the planet’s gravity to get him in on time. Not only did he have to get in without being detected or seen but he had to be at the launch point at a certain time. This was so his ordinance would hit its target at a certain time. He had allowed himself just a few seconds leeway since, as he had kept saying, this was a piece of cake.
A few minutes later he adjusted his course slightly. It just got harder; he couldn’t approach too close to the target since there was the heighten security and since there were a number of other ships around it. Some were stationed in one location while others were moving along certain courses. A few of the ships further out were zipping this way and that as if their pilots could not make up their minds where they wanted to be.
After another minute one of the small ships zipping about suddenly cut him off. It just came out of no where, zipped right in front of him, slowed down quickly then stopped. One second his front window looked clear and then it was full of ship. He had to make a sudden turn to his right to avoid running into it. He used the thrusters located on his wing tips to make the turn. He gently fed power to the thrusters at the same time he banked. As his small craft curved to starboard, he got a close look, though his view screen, of the paint job on the civilian vessel. It looked kind of neat actually with reds, greens and a
certain round red and yellow logo painted here and there. It, however, was a closer look then he wanted.
When his ship came out of the curve and straighten out his course he thought about the close call there. Not what he had expected. Two-seconds later he jerked as the realization hit that he hadn’t turned off the thrusters and that his ship still moved in the wrong direction. Or had he? He thought he remembered doing it. Whatever, he reached for the control, ran his fingers down the virtual power control too fast and his finger went past the end, almost hitting another control. That would not have been good.
He spent a second hoping the longer thruster run did not attract anyone’s attention. The energy produced by thrusters that small should not be easily seen unless someone with powerful sensors happened to be looking straight at him. With the security as tight as it was around here that could have happened. Than again with so many thrusters and drives in action his could go undetected.
Nothing he could do about it through, so he decided to ignore the possibility until and if it was proven true. He had to get back to his course. He pivoted the ship until its nose pointed toward the planet. He let the gravity do the work for his drives.

end segment