Harrison nodded as his son’s silence dragged. A dagger of fear pricked his gut, started to pierce inward. “You...were among them? The Jesters, I mean?”

  Buck nodded.

  Harrison swallowed back sudden dryness. “And what was that like? What were they like?”

  His son looked fully into his face and there was something disturbing behind his eyes, as though he was searching Harrison’s soul for some sign of...something. Finally, after what seemed an interminable, agonizing wait, Buck smiled again and said, “Amateurs. Thugs, like we’d been told. They kept me locked up most of the time.”

  Harrison let out a long breath he hoped Buck didn’t notice. At the same time, his innards twisted a different direction. Kelly would’ve made contact, if she could have. He knew it. Had she been unable? Was she hurt? Dead?

  “You didn’t interact with them?” he asked hurriedly.

  “Only when they roughed me up a little,” Buck replied. “But being with them, listening to their bullshit...Dad, it made me want to be a bigger part of beating them. Leading and flying Valkyries has been the greatest honor of my life, but I want more. I want to be a part of the decision-making—the strategy—that destroys them and brings the galaxy back in order!”

  Harrison nodded slowly, and with relief—truth be told. He set a hand upon his son’s shoulder, squeezed. “Well, you certainly don’t have anything to prove to—”

  Every light in the room suddenly darkened to baleful red and klaxons blared.

  “What the...?”

  The holoprojector suddenly snarled to bluey life. Within it, Commander Woodruff, Executive Officer of the Obliterator looked out from her spot on the bridge with startled eyes. “Admiral Harrison, apologies! But we have unscheduled inbounds, hyperspace emissions appearing at the system’s edge!”

  “What?” Harrison barked. “An attack?”

  “It looks like it, sir. They came in hot, already into the gravity well!”

  Reentering partly into a system’s well was reckless. The gravity shadow could—often did—scramble hyperdrives, scatter vessels, sometimes fatally so. But reckless could only mean one group.

  “Hell’s Jesters?” Buck asked before Harrison could.

  Woodruff blinked a little at the minor breach of conduct, but nodded jerkily. “Grav drive signatures appear to belong to Hellhounds!”

  Harrison exchanged a look with his son, couldn’t help sharing the feral grin his saw creasing his face.

  “We’re on our way up.”

  THE HELLHOUND CAME out of hyperspace with a jostle through the hull that felt like machinery strained too far. “What the hell was that?” Tim asked, blinking away afterimages of the eerie phantasms of hyper.

  “Told you we were reentering too deep!” Jeanie squawked back.

  “Not my call,” Tim snapped back at the AI. He glanced at the tactical hologram, waited as the globular settled and icons began to speckle it, the sensors reorienting, acquired contact with the other Hellhounds—and a hell of a lot more. Tim couldn’t help but whistle. “Holy...talk about poking the hornet’s nest.”

  The full breadth of the Coronado System came into focus. And with those details was revealed dozens of Alliance starships settled like a shark pack, coldly metallic against the red and dark blue orb of the planet. Shuttles came and went from the surface to bulging gantries of fleet repair docks, orbital supply and service platforms, and even a full construction yard. As the Jesters’ appearance became obvious, those flinched into suddenly motion, like minnows stirred by a shadow on a pond’s surface, darting for the planet or docking berths.

  “How scrambled are we?” Tim asked, urgency reaching up his throat like a physical thing to clench at his windpipe.

  “Bad,” Jeanie replied and brought up a smaller display, showing his starfighter wing still blinking forth from halos of hyperspace emergence—and splayed about like blue jewels cast carelessly across the black velvet of space.

  “Damn, never an easy day...” Tim flicked the communicator to the tactical network. “Watkins Wing! Form on me now!” The icons of his fighters took on a lighter hue at Jeanie’s helpful instruction. Darker-hued ‘Hounds of Red’s Wing intermixed. There hadn’t been any collisions—Tim had seen that before—but it was a devil of a snarl out there. “Jesus Christ...sort yourselves out!”

  “Valkyries on their way out to meet us!” Jeanie announced as the tactical computer blatted.

  “Of course, they are!”

  The tactical glittered with a scattered-jewel pattern of icons that began to glide together slowly, then not so slowly. The war book flung up schemata that quickly confirmed Jeanie’s pronouncement. Behind them, closer to the planet, the swarm of larger contacts stirred like grazers at a watering hole, alerted to predators. “Three minutes to extreme weapons range,” Jeanie estimated.

  A globular popped up next to Tim’s head. “Cut straight in!” Red’s sweating visage ordered from the hologram. “Stall them while I take my wing around a wider route, try to get in close to the docks!”

  “I’ll make sure to give ‘em plenty to look at,” Tim replied. Then she was gone and he was left watching the squadrons of his wing come together into three arrowhead formation, stacked and staggered into three alternating tiers.

  Squadrons, Tim thought grimly. At eight, seven, and seven Hellhounds, all of them were barely half-strength. The fighting at Fury had put the Jesters through the wringer and Tim was filling out empty slots with recruits. He noted one of those sidling in close on his starboard flank and touched the icon to bring up a private channel.

  “How you doing, kid?”

  A fresh globular materialized to show Cory, lips pressed to a bloodless line, sweat-slick skin framed by a new helmet, and eyes ablaze with intensity that could burn a hole in the air. “You don’t need to worry about me,” she replied with a voice like a screw being tightened.

  He half-smiled. “Maybe I’m worrying about this new Hellhound.”

  And that wasn’t totally untrue. This was only his third time up in the Mark IV. But the new fighter felt remarkable like the old one, despite its leaner profile, and transferring Jeanie into its quantum core had gone off without a hitch. Really, the thing felt almost eager, thrumming around him.

  “The Mark IV’s will be fine,” Cory replied—still sounding like unseen hands were twisting her between them. “Just wish we’d gotten everyone switched out before this.”

  Tim grunted in agreement. His First Squadron was fully converted, as was the Second, now under Matyszak. But the Third was still the IV’s, as were two of Red’s squadrons. There was no helping it, of course, but it added to the sense of this operation being rushed—everything always being so damned rushed.

  “So, I’m fine,” Cory said, sounding like she was speaking more to herself. “I’m going to be fine.”

  “Yes, you are.”

  “Ninety seconds to extreme weapons range,” Jeanie said. A blatting alarm added to the interruption. “Hostile targeting on our silhouette.”

  Two three-fighter flights of Valkyries were converging on the axis of Tim’s advance, likely picket vessels, drowsy pilots on what should have been long, boring sweeps across the out orbits of the system. Bad luck for them, this day. But they were coming out to face lousy odds with pluck. Alliance Valkyrie jocks always had them.

  Tim cut the channel to Cory and switched to address his full command. “Watkins Wing, look sharp! We’re going to bowl right through these guys and get as close to the yards as possible. Save your scatter-packs for that. Second Squad—Matyszak—break off when these outriders cut through and keep them off our tails.”

  Squad Leader replies crackled across the tactical network. “Always the fun jobs,” Matyszak growled.

  Tim resisted the urge to reply. He missed Li, his old Second, lost on the Fury. Matyszak was solid, a long-time Squad Leader, but a cold, almost reptilian man of dark eyes and darker moods. Saying Tim put up with him was almost going too far. But he needed him. Hell, they needed everyone they could get!

  “Sixty seconds,” Jeanie announced needlessly. Tim wondered if it was possible the AI ever got nervous.

  From the spasm of contacts around Coronado, a fresh set of larger icons was sliding forth at a pace that could barely be called slow, but definitely steady. Frowning, Tim touched one of these. The war book threw up a globular display of a large, ugly, barrel-shaped hull with stubby gravity drive nacelles that looked like they’d been bolted on as an afterthought. A red twinkle across the schematic highlighted a dreadnought’s worth of weapons, though.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “Marshal-series monitor,” Jeanie replied. “I’ve never seen one live, before. It’s a mobile battle platform. The Alliance usually stations them over the outer Foundation Worlds that are more exposed to piracy” which meant not really “so that they don’t have to dedicate starships to the task.”

  Tim had his mouth open to respond, but the crack of a particle beam glancing off his ventral shield turned whatever he might’ve said to a yelp. He steadied the Hellound as more azure bolts quested out into the formation, none as luckily-aimed as the first.

  “Probing fire!” he grated into the communicator. A glance at the systems display showed him a pulse of yellow on the shields that faded quickly as the generator coil rebuilt the lozenge of coherent energy that protected the fighter. “Stay on course! Watch for the missiles!”

  Those followed as the opposing groups closed to with ranges within which each side’s missiles had sufficient power to reach the other. Valkyrie icons disintegrated into the anemone patterns of dozens of missile tracks on the tactical and these, in turn, lurched like the tendrils of some spaceborne cephalopod, grasping for Hellhounds.

  “Give it to ‘em!” Tim snapped and, thumbing the weapons selector atop the control stick to all energy weapons, crushed the trigger.

  Particle cannon spouting azure lighting, followed by the cyan chatter of the plasma blaster. Jeanie had thrown up a crimson targeting halo over the display that Tim walked over one approaching missile tail after another, bursting them into momentary antimatter globes. A streak of sweaty carved an acidy path down his spine as he worked his way through the ever-closing swarm, still-exploding, but more still oncoming.

  A typical engagement would have seen him already release a counter-volley of missiles, but these Mark IV’s didn’t have the scatter-packs to spare. Cory had told everyone to hold them. It felt wrong. It felt crazy, watching the Alliance warheads looping towards him.

  The last of them vanished in a stuttering flash of white fire, overwhelmed by the Jesters’ fire. Tim let out a breath. Vaguely, he heard an alarm.

  Lightning slashed through the Jester formation. Tim juked instinctively, but azure death sought elsewhere. A storm of it converged below Tim, amongst Second Squadron. Shields blazed out, the sparkling glimmer of it lost in a smear of orange-red fire and tumbling shrapnel that had been a Hellhound an instant before.

  “God!” Cory cried across the tactical network.

  Then Valkyries were chopping in amongst the Hellhound, wingtips aflame, blue-white claws blazing out in search of more prey.

  “Speed!” Tim barked. “Keep going!”

  The Mark IV responded to his command and lurched by the wild, slashing paths of the Alliance starfighters. He could feel the extra power pressing up through his spine, already straining him past the tolerances of the interrail compensators. A ferocious grin broke across his face. Couldn’t help it. It felt great.

  Icons intermixed in a frenzied shattering to aft as the Valkyries attempted either turns or pivot to bring their weapons to bear on the passing Hellhounds. But Matyszak and the Second had decelerated to engage, pouncing upon them, even as they expected easy sucker shots. Confusion became savagery and a desperate melee. Within moments, Matyszak had avenged his lost squad mate and was running up the score on the rest, hideously festive firework patterns scrawling the void.

  One of the monitors was lumbering across his path and another was taking up position to its flank, off to port and high. Tim could see their scheme, barring any direct course down-system to the planet and the yards in its orbit. They looked like some kind of metallic whales, arching out in ponderous courses, distance and size giving them the illusion of slow-motion.

  And like those waterborne analogs, these beasts suddenly broke the surface with a very lethal spume. Each vanished behind a wavefront of missiles, a salvo so dense the hologram momentary lost the details, merged their paths into a writhing blob of accelerating light—a tsunami rushing across the vacuum for the Jesters.

  “Jeanie...” Tim gasped.

  “Can’t go through them!” the AI replied. “They will overwhelm you!”

  “Break off!” Tim ordered. “Scatter! Chaff and ECM pods! Go-go-go!”

  First and Third Squadrons needed no encouragement, their formations splintering into separate flights, in some cases, into singles as the missile torrent washed towards them. Tim wrenched his Hellhound to starboard and kicked the thrusters again, slamming himself back into the flight couch as the starfighter sprinted for open space. “Stay with me, Cory!” he called through gritting teeth.

  The mass of missiles distended and came apart on the tactical, tendrils wheeling out as their tiny brains chose targets, those tendrils spiraling out as individual threads. A swarm of them looped after Tim and Cory, whose course had taken them well above the ecliptic plane of Coronado, a long chase into emptiness with the fire and violence seemingly left behind.

  The howling hostile targeting alarm never let that illusion take hold, though. Blinking through sweat, Tim stared at the dozen missiles still hounding them. Even with the Mark IV’s extra speed, there was no way they were going to outlast their pursuers thrusters. “Turn and burn on ‘em, Cory!”

  “Got it!”

  Dropping power to the thrusters, Tim juiced the port maneuvering filed and whipped his Hellhound about. The missiles were right there, he saw with a gut-punch of terror. Reflex squeezed his finger over the trigger and the chin-mounted plasma blaster went to its chattering work.

  The leading edge of the missile wave encountered the fiery spray of his blaster fire and shattered in antimatter blooms. Those that wheeled through met Cory’s, too. She’d mirrored Tim’s move almost exactly, hanging off his port wing, “falling” up and away from the missiles as she shredded away with all energy weapons.

  Between them, nothing could get through. But one of them got close, pierced by a plasma bolt at scant kilometers and its ensuing flash and spray of shrapnel pummeling Tim’s forward deflectors. Jeanie dulled the viewscreen to save his eyes, but the inertial compensators couldn’t quite save him from the jarring blow as shockwave buffeted the starfighter.

  Tim was still fighting the controls when a fresh alarm warbled through. “Valkyries!” he heard Cory warn over the cacophony.

  Without thought, Tim hit the thrusters again. Speed was never a mistake in a scrum and he let the Hellhound shoot off at the last wild angle its tumble had left it at. Straps bit his shoulders as the fighter streaked straight down the gravity well, again, once more in to the fiery tangle of battle. None of it was as terrifyingly brilliant as the azure bolts suddenly chopping past him all around.

  “Pair on our tail!” Jeanie cried with convincingly human alarm.

  A particle beam glanced off the dorsal shield and Tim let the impact carrying the Hellhound end-over-end with the throttle still wide open, flinging the fighter into a wild tumble. Groaning through the pressure of g-forces getting through the straining inertial compensators, Tim steadied his sights on the space to aft and pulsed the thrusters for control.

  But these Valkyrie jocks were no snowflakes fresh out of the Academy and weren’t fooled, splitting off to either side. Tim chose the one slashing to starboard and put the Hellhound through a hull-groaning corkscrew to follow.

  He had no idea where Cory had gotten to. He knew the other Valkyrie would be cutting across his tail. But it was moment-to-moment, now, no time for thought, just the rat-race, the instinctive. He and his AI ghost-partner-whatever against a killer universe. The Valkyrie juked and wheeled to try and shake his targeting halo. But one clever too many brought it into that crimson death-circle. He fired.

  Bolts lashing out to bathe his foe’s shields crossed a second set, chopping in from port, then walking up right for Tim’s nose. Shit! He turned into the incoming fire just as the second Valkyrie was on him, cutting the chord across the half-circle of his pursuit of its partner. A particle beam sizzled across the dorsal shield, close enough to part his hair. A second crashed off the starboard bank, jarring Tim into a half-slide that exposed his whole profile to the onrushing attacker.

  But then the onrushing Valkyrie just wasn’t there. Azure lances sliced down from above, splintering on its shields, then piercing. Generator coils burst across its spine in sprays of spark and metal that ran to slag as the energy bolts carved its fuselage. The Alliance fighter didn’t so much explode as fly apart, a smear of fluorescing gasses and glowing splinters that snowed across Tim’s path.

  With a curse, he yanked back on the stick, pulled the Hellhound’s nose up over the conflagration with barely a heartbeat to spare. But the evasion put the speeding blur of a Hellhound directly above him, tearing by so close the Jester icon on its flank seemed to smirk and wink at him.

  “Got one!” Cory cheered, seemingly oblivious of the nearness of their collision.

  Tim sliced to starboard to follow her, an admonition ready on his lips. But it died there as he watched her tear after the second Valkyrie, and fell in on her wing. The Alliance pilot was going for a terrific burst of speed to fight clear, probably knowing a Hellhound would normally struggle to maintain the pursuit across longer range. But these were Mark IV’s it faced and Cory wasn’t letting up, peppering its tail with the particle cannon.

  Knowing what would come next, Tim cut wide to port, splitting the odds and guessing when the Valkyrie tried to shake Cory, that’d be his direction. He’d reverse the trick the Alliance pilots had played on him. But Cory wasn’t letting go her grip, pouring on the thrust, getting right up on her prey.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46