“You know,” Sarah had told him, “with a ship the size of the War Angel, I’m surprised it didn’t carry some individual fighter craft.”
Jack took a long drink of wine, admiring the label of the bottle sitting in the middle of their table. Putting his glass down, he swirled the liquid around and watched it slowly gather into a puddle at the bottom. “Nice legs on the wine,” he commented. Suddenly he realized that Sarah had asked him a question and he felt embarrassed at how he had lost track of where he was. “I’m… I’m sorry. What did you say?”
She repeated her observation, and Jack found himself nodding along with her words. “It probably should have. In fact, if we get the old tug up and running and the EAD puts it back into commission, I suspect that it certainly will. But back then, there was one simple problem: who would fly them?”
“Ah. True.”
“Ships like the War Angel weren’t exactly crewed by astronauts and pilots from various air forces. Hell, my ancestor wound up on one, and he was a linguistics professor.”
“What did he do?”
“Manned the sensor station. It was only fair, I suppose. He helped design the Revenge-class ships.”
Sarah poured herself some of the wine. “That’s so weird.”
“Tell me about it! Back then, educators truly did not have much in the way of other training. But he had joined an early resistance cell, and he was on the very first mission to infiltrate and destroy an Omegan ship.” Jack took a sip. “He was also the only survivor of that mission. His team had each worn a tiny camera on their clothing and in a stroke of luck, he got inside the engine room, the landing bay, areas near the crew quarters, you name it. He saw a pretty good chunk of the ship.”
“I can only imagine how much faster the First Period would have ended if guys like him would have had more pilots to back them up on their missions.”
“Yeah,” Jack sighed. “An old earth tyrant once said that the first thing he wanted to do was kill all the lawyers. But a smart invading army knows better. The first thing you do is kill all the pilots.”
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