History Literature / TheFlightEngineer

*** Surprisingly, Peter Raeder is not the character who acts as a walking ShoutOut to Scotty. That honor falls to Cpo. Paddy Casey, among whose first lines is "she canna take the strain!"
* SpaceIsAnOcean: [[Franchise/StarTrek Doohan's roots]] show through; the terminology half of this trope is very heavily used. Space itself is not an ocean, however.

** MrFixit: Chief Engineer Augie Skinner in theory. Raeder in practice, though officially he's just in charge of maintaining the fighters.
*** Also Cpo. Casey.

* OldSchoolDogfighting: Played with for what little we see of fighter combat. Speeds chase each other's tails and loop around crazily and are armed with line-of-sight weapons, but the ranges are far greater than usual and, given the fact that capital ships avert SpaceFriction (see below), it's possible the Speeds were [[InvokedTrope specifically designed that way]].

** In ''The Rising'' the ''Invincible'' works alongside a pair of destroyers called the ''{{Aubrey|-Maturin}}'' and the ''[[{{Aubrey-Maturin}} Maturin]]''. This is a reference to the books on both sides of the fourth wall.

* InsectoidAliens: The narrator remarks in ''The Rising'' that the Fibians seem to be tailor-made to push all of humanity's insect-related fear buttons at once. They're basically {{giant spider}}s with stingers.

* OldSchoolDogfighting: Averted despite the use of space fighters.

* ArtisticLicenseMilitary: Sterling and Doohan goofed up the lower officer ranks. Cynthia Robbins is ranked a Second Lieutenant, but that's an army rank and the rest of the Space Command ranks are navy (she should be an Ensign, or perhaps Lieutenant Junior Grade). The authors made the exact opposite mistake with two Marine pilots that General Scaragoglu assigns to Raeder in ''The Privateer''; both are ranked as Ensigns when they should be Second Lieutenants.

''The Flight Engineer'' is a trilogy of {{military|ScienceFiction}} {{space opera}} novels by Creator/SMStirling (author of ''Literature/TheDraka'' series) and JamesDoohan.

''The Flight Engineer'' is a trilogy of {{military|ScienceFiction}} {{space opera}} novels by Creator/SMStirling (author of the ''[[TheDraka Draka]]'' series) and JamesDoohan.

* SpaceshipSlingshotStunt
* WronskiFeint: Done by ''Invincible'' in ''The Privateer''. Damaged and with a Mollie flotilla in hot pursuit, she jumps into a barely charted system that happens to have a pulsar dangerously close to the jump point. Since ''Invincible'' is expecting said pulsar, they're able to slingshot around it and back to the jump point. The Mollies are ''not'' expecting it and [[LudicrousGibs end up smeared across its surface, their very atoms crushed into degenerate matter]].

'''''The Flight Engineer''''' is a trilogy of {{military|ScienceFiction}} {{space opera}} novels by Creator/SMStirling (author of the ''[[TheDraka Draka]]'' series) and JamesDoohan.

* BetaCouple: Raeder's second, Second Lieutenant Cynthia Robbins, and Chief Petty Officer Paddy Casey. The fact that their relationship is against regulations convinces Casey to try and get into Officer Candidate School.

* SpaceFriction: Averted at every opportunity. Ships regularly drift on inertia, and stopping a ship travelling at high speed requires the vessel to flip end-for-end.

* RenegadeSplinterFaction: The third book reveals that [[spoilers: the Fibians allied with the Mollies are under a rogue queen.]]

'''''The Flight Engineer''''' is a trilogy of {{military|ScienceFiction}} {{space opera}} novels by Creator/SMSterling (author of the ''[[TheDraka Draka]]'' series) and JamesDoohan.

'''''The Flight Engineer''''' is a trilogy of {{military|ScienceFiction}} {{space opera}} novels by S.M. Sterling (author of the ''[[TheDraka Draka]]'' series) and JamesDoohan.

* AcePilot: Raeder scored seven kills before losing his hand, making him the first ace of the war. Unfortunately three of those kills were in the engagement where he lost his hand.

* CommandRoster: A rare case where TheCaptain is not the main character. [[spoiler:At least at first.]] ''The Rising'' lists the entire command roster. %% Ranks given where I can remember them.
** TheCaptain: Capt. Roger Knott. [[spoiler:Later Raeder, after Knott and his NumberTwo are injured in a Mollie/Fibian raid at the beginning of book three.]]

* WronskiFeint: Done by ''Invincible'' in ''The Privateer''. Damaged and with a Mollie flotilla in hot pursuit, she jumps into a barely charted system that happens to have a pulsar dangerously close to the jump point. Since ''Invincible'' is expecting said pulsar, they're able to slingshot around it and back to the jump point. The Mollies are ''not'' expecting it and [[LudicrousGibs end up smeared across its surface, their very atoms crushed into degenerate matter]].

* SecretTestOfCharacter: In ''The Privateer'', General Scaragoglu assigns Raeder and his group of ersatz pirates to train for their infiltration under a professional spook. After the spook injures one of Raeder's men as an object lesson in when they should and should not take off their spacesuit helmets after breaching an airlock, Raeder hits the roof and threatens to resign his commission. [[spoiler:Turned out Scaragoglu wanted to see how much Raeder cared for his subordinates, and the commander passed with flying colors.

* ''The Independent Command'': After a Fibian raid on a Commonwealth vacation world, ''Invincible'' is sent on a solo mission behind Fibian lines from which she is not expected to return. Then they discover that the monstrous Fibians may not be monsters after all...

* BetaCouple: Raeder's second, Lieutenant Cynthia Robbins, and Chief Petty Officer Paddy Casey. The fact that their relationship is against regulations convinces Casey to try and get into Officer Candidate School.

* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: [[spoiler:Not a good thing in this case. Turns out the Fibian attacks on the Commonwealth are orchestrated by rogue elements. ''Invincible'' manages to contact the Fibian central government, leading to a BigDamnHeroes moment at the end of book three.]]

* TheBattlestar / CoolStarship: ''Invincible'' is the prototype for a new type of carrier, a pocket carrier designed to be a LightningBruiser compared to the much larger fleet carriers. Her primary weapon is her complement of 36 Speeds, but she's far from defenseless without them.
* BetaCouple: Raeder's second, Lieutenant Cynthia Robbins, and Chief Petty Officer Paddy Casey. The fact that their would-be relationship is against regulations convinces Casey to try and get into Officer Candidate School.

* FasterThanLightTravel: Transit involves accelerating towards a jump point until you reach roughly 0.1''c''. Then you spend a few hours travelling to one of the jump points connected to the one you entered.

** APirate400YearsTooLate: {{Invoked}} by some (not all) pirates to make themselves feel like holo heroes.

** APirateFourHundredYearsTooLate: {{Invoked}} by some (not all) pirates to make themselves feel like holo heroes.

The Commonwealth is at war with a group of religious fanatics called the Mollies who cut off all exports of the refined antihydrogen that society depends on. They have acquired allies in the form of the spiderlike Fibians.

* {{Antimatter}}: The primary source of energy is matter/antimatter reactors. Used to be that the antihydrogen involved was manufactured very expensively and slowly by particle accelerators, but then the Mollies discovered huge natural clouds of the stuff in their territory and began mining it, refining it, and selling it to the rest of the galaxy. The war came when they decided to stop all exports on religious grounds.

* TheMole: [[spoiler:Larkin]] in ''The Rising''.
* NoBloodForPhlebotinum: The war started over the Mollies' decision to stop all exports of antihydrogen to the Commonwealth. Among the recurring issues is Space Command's raids on the Mollies' refineries to get enough A-H to continue the war effort.

*** Paddy Casey's first line in ''The Rising'' goes something like "she canna take the strain!"

* SpaceFighter: Speeds are fighter-bombers, [=WACCIs=] are stealth recon ships.

* NoBloodForPhlebotinum: The war started over the Mollies' decision to stop all exports of antihydrogen to the Commonwealth. Among the recurring

** Using an in-universe movie as a proxy, in ''The Privateer'' the authors [[TakeThat take a hilarious swipe]] at the ''[[Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries TOS]]'' episode where Gene Roddenberry confused the ''Enterprise'' with a submarine.