Orphan's Alliance (Jason Wander) by Robert Buettner

landing craft. And cruisers hauled everything else that moved among planets, from Cavorite to diamond miners.
    Mostly, though, a cruiser was to war in space what an aircraft carrier was to wet navy war. It projected power via thirty-six Starfire fighter bombers, capable of defending Kabul in space, attacking other ships, and bombing targets on a planet’s surface, by descending into at least the upper reaches of the atmosphere.
    The trouble, if the Slugs were coming back, was that a cruiser was one basket holding too many eggs. After the Blitz, the Slug Armada had destroyed Hope ’s sister ship, Excalibur, and all save one of Excalibur ’s rudimentary fighter aircraft, in an hour.
    I leaned forward, so I could stare at the stub-winged, chemical-fueled Starfire across from us. It wasn’t much advanced from the crates that the Slugs had swept aside to get at Excalibur . I compared the Starfire to my mental picture of the pearlescent watermelon seed that had flashed above Le Bourget. With Scorpion, we would stand a chance. “What will it take to refit the revolvers to launch Scorpions?”
    He shrugged. “Scorpion was designed from day one to fit a B-class hangar deck revolver. But it’s a bullshit question.”
    “Is everything bullshit with you?”
    He sighed. “No. Seriously. As of today there’s exactly one Scorpion. It only got built because Howard’s Spooks buried the prototype program. Mom’s Congressional buddies will never scare up appropriations for more.”
    “Scaring may be no problem.” I gestured at the pilot’s seat, while I sank into the co-pilot’s seat. “Sit down, and let me tell you where we’re going and why.”
    After I briefed him in, we sat in the parked troop transport for another hour, just talking. Like, the shrinks would have said, a father and son. Jude started spending less time in his bunk, and more time with us in the wardroom.
    The next time we boarded the troop transport was five pony jumps later, when its crew delivered Howard, Ord, Jude, and me from orbit to Tressel’s surface. The crew reconfigured the cattle car rear compartment to VIP four-across seating, to make our entrance a bit grander. Kabul , which would have made a grand entrance indeed, would remain in orbit.
    Kabul , like all cruisers, was assembled in zero gravity, in Earth or lunar orbit. Cruisers were designed to live and, eventually, die, in weightless vacuum, never leaving space. So cruisers were built with the structural strength of Dixie cups, and aerodynamics to match.
    B-class cruisers like Kabul , because they manipulated gravity, weren’t confined to space by their lack of aerodynamics. They could theoretically sink gently and majestically down through the atmosphere, and land on a planet’s surface, like a bigger, fireproof version of the Hindenburg . But a cruiser costs more than the gross domestic product of Peru. Therefore, the starship designers didn’t really want to test whether something as big and complex as a B-class was strong enough to sit on the ground without collapsing under its own weight like a wet Dixie cup. However, our arrival on Tressel resembled the Hindenburg ’s anyway.

TWENTY
    JUDE, who was our only stranger to Tressel, sat in the window seat beside me, peering down as our transport overflew the Tressen capital at forty thousand feet, then banked and descended. Jude blinked and turned away from the window. “That’s really how we’re getting landing instructions?”
    Mankind could n–m tow navigate light years across the stars, but when it came to navigating the last few miles down from orbit to an Outworld’s surface, Alaskan bush piloting was more sophisticated. Tressel had no aircraft, and so no runways, so we were to land in an unimproved field somewhere outside the city. That was no problem. Transports are built tough. But the only radios on Tressel were the two that Earth’s consulates used to talk to one another, and to send signals out toward loitering drone