Flipspace: Flight of the Mockingbird

By John Steiner

Training for the ISS Mockingbird, Colonel Sumitra Ramachandra and Major Lamarr Fitch find that they’re being deployed before certification. The ISS Astraeus, an International Space Organization vessel fails to transmit its latest exploration report in the Gliese 667 System twenty-two light-years away. Colonel Ramachandra learns that the Mockingbird she commands was built for more than intra-solar operation. Three people with complicated and enigmatic backgrounds are added to her crew roster just before launch.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Melange Books, LLC
• Release date: Jan 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781612357935

John Steiner

John Steiner earned his Associate of Biology at Salt Lake Community College, where he is currently working as a tutor in math and chemistry. He exercises an avid interest in history, science, philosophy, mythology, martial arts as well as military tactics and technology.

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Special Smashwords Edition

FLIPSPACE:

Flight of the Mockingbird

by John Steiner

Published by

Melange Books, LLC

White Bear Lake, MN 55110

www.melange-books.com

Flight of the Mockingbird, Copyright 2014 by John Steiner

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-61235-793-5

Names, characters, and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published in the United States of America.

Cover Design by Becca Barnes

FLIGHT OF THE MOCKINGBIRD

by John Steiner

Training for the ISS Mockingbird, Colonel Sumitra Ramachandra and Major Lamarr Fitch find that they’re being deployed before certification. The ISS Astraeus, an International Space Organization vessel fails to transmit its latest exploration report in the Gliese 667 System twenty-two light-years away. Colonel Ramachandra learns that the Mockingbird she commands was built for more than intra-solar operation. Three people with complicated and enigmatic backgrounds are added to her crew roster just before launch.

Table of Contents

FLIPSPACE: Flight of the Mockingbird

Chapter 1: Always the Last Minute

Chapter 2: Three of a Kind

Chapter 3: The Flipside

Chapter 4: Titanomachy

Chapter 5: Magic Hour

Chapter 6: The Rotate Corral

Chapter 7: Art of Post-Op

Glossary of Terms

About the Author

Previews

Chapter 1

Always the Last Minute

A car with the black and silver colors of Aerospace Defense Response rolled along a vast parkway near the airstrip. Instead of wheels, it glided on four Mat Treads. The smart material enveloped, shifted, softened, and hardened according to terrain and driver intent. The machine came to a smooth halt in front of Wing Command Headquarters.

A gull wing door opened to allow two black uniformed people to step out. The first was a tall lean woman of dark complexion, hair cropped short on the back and sides, with an enrapturing face and silver irises. On the right side of her collar shone an eagle and the left carried an equally glistening pin depicting three upward shooting stars. The man walking in step to her left had brown hair, brown eyes. His light toned face looked as if it might have taken a few punches, but otherwise everything remained in place. The gold leaf cluster on his right collar distinguished him as a major to the woman’s colonel rank. He opened one of the front doors for his superior officer to enter and followed her.

Inside, a ceiling mounted display fixture stood in place of a front desk. It lit up with an image of a man appearing to be mid-twenties in age and matching ADR uniform. The two dimensional projection looked the same when viewed from any direction. The man wasn’t human, but an approximation of Self-Ware inhabiting the building’s quantum computer. The AI exhibited good-natured amicability.

Good morning, Colonel Sumitra Ramachandra and Major Lamarr Fitch. Its excessive warmth came with an over-appeasing grin. Brigadier General Chaffee is in a net meeting at the moment. However, you’re more than welcome to wait outside his office, ma’am and sir.

Good. Thank you, Yani, Sumitra acknowledged with more subdued cordiality.

With all the training we’re doing, you wouldn’t think he’d have us wait, Lamarr muttered.

Studying the door, as if she might see through it, Sumitra speculated on the reason for the summons. We’re most likely being activated early for a rescue op. The Pan-American Combine has been nagging NATO to help with Golden Fist of Pacifica for years. The GFP taking hostages in international jurisdiction would serve as a trigger for NATO involvement.

Lamarr looked to say something disparaging about the government presiding over American nations, one of which he hailed from, when the door opened on its own, and cut his retort short.

Yes, come in Rama and Fitch, the general instructed without military formality.

In a moment of weakness, Sumitra caught herself eyeing the generous interior. Her office and personal quarters on the ISV-71 Raven she’d soon command for real would fit in here twice over. However, General Chaffee’s laid-back approach to command vanished before either of them entered the room, causing her to snap to attention. Lamarr matched her disciplined stance.

Chaffee’s deep brown-toned skin varied a little. His hair would’ve curled tight if it hadn’t been buzzed. In this era, being seventy years old didn’t mean gray hair or many wrinkles thanks to better medical understanding of DNA repair and the gene therapy that resulted.

I realize you have been working your crew double-duty to get up to speed, but we’ll have to scrub the last two weeks, General Chaffee announced. Rama felt as if he was warning her for the pending sucker punch.

She knew it. Always pull the plug at the last goddamn minute.

"We’ve got a serious situation with the FTLV