Rebel Hell (Hell's Jesters, #3), page 17
Geiger shrugged, felt suddenly alive again, like he hadn’t in months. “We’re going to find out.”
KELLY CAME TEARING out of hyperspace like an avenging angel.
“Harrison Wing, form up!” she barked. “Basilisks form a perimeter around the transports.” She touched the icon of one of the Dynamarks on the tactical display. “Jerry, how are you doing?”
His sweat-slickened visage filled a globular. “These things don’t exactly have great engines or great shields or, you know, great anything! You’d better keep the flies off us!”
She offered a grim smile. “Oh, we’ll keep them rather busy. I promise.”
Loudon loomed before them, growing with each moment. She killed her thrusters, let momentum carry them coasting down the gravity well. They didn’t need the extra speed. Syntar was rushing out to meet them.
That’s a spoiling fight, she thought, eyeballing the pair of drone tenders accelerating into their path. An additional wing of hunter-killers mixed in with them, though likely not their own coteries. Looks like between forty and fifty drones. That’s enough to mess with us; not enough to stop us.
She watched as sensor data refined and the picture cleared. Syntar had another group in geosynchronous orbit above one of the lesser surviving cities, well to the north of their intended landing site and around the curve of the planet. They looked to be screening a mix of orbital docks, but clearly held hunter-killers in reserve. That’s the tricky part. And there had to be more.
“Any sign of a Navy presence?” she asked her AI.
“The only gravity drive signatures we are registering appear to be Syntar make.”
Kelly looked at Jerry’s globular. “Put Cory on.” The perspective shifted to pick up the spritely kid, looking equally stressed. “Is that augmented sensor suite we installed getting anything the Hellhounds aren’t?”
“Not a thing,” she replied, but shook her head unhappily. “Doesn’t mean they aren’t there, only that we’re not picking them up.”
Kelly’s lips pinched. “We’ll just deal with what’s in front of us then.” She changed channels. “Harrison Wing, First Squad, Third Flight break off and stay back with the transports.”
She hated doing that; she only had eighteen Hellhounds in two squads of nine, a real skeleton crew. But she wanted at least a single flight to help the Basilisks, should someone jump the transports. Part of her squirmed—the ramshackle, thrown-together nature of this op getting to her. They hadn’t the time to think this through, as sure as hell hadn’t the resources.
Stop it.
She dragged in a long breath and let the frenetic displays rushing around her steady in her mind, pieces sliding back to place as the seconds blazed by and thousands of kilometers with them.
On the tactical, the swarm of hunter-killers accompanying the tenders put on speed and pulled out ahead of them. A pointer brushed over the icon of one of them, triggered a globular that displayed the schematic of a cigar-shaped craft, bulged to aft with thruster package and stubby wings from which spouted twin particle cannon. One-to-one, a Hellhound would eat a Syntar drone as a snack and hardly slow down. Five-to-one might be a fight.
Ten-to-one...?
The tenders continued to be left behind and Kelly saw why. Fresh swarms of drones birthed from each’s hull and formed up around their motherships. The scheme became clear; the leading would take Kelly’s group’s first, best shots and the second group would pounce immediately after, all while the tenders hung back, coordinating with their AI networks and providing long range support with their heavier weapons.
Kelly touched the icon of the lead Basilisk. “Kannidy, I want your group to hold your fire for the initial exchange. Same goes for you, Third Flight. Hold on to your scatter-packs.”
“That’s a lot of drones coming at us, Commander,” the Basilisk Leader replied.
“Yep,” she said—and suddenly, intensely missed Solito, who rarely had to have things explained to him. “A lot of them are going to go right through us.”
“Ah, I see.”
Kelly nodded to herself. And we’re going to go right through them.
A shift amongst the Syntar formation confirmed Kelly’s suspicion, the just-launched drones pulled away from the tenders and solidified into a second wave behind the first. But the first continued to pull away. The trip-wire and the trap, she thought. Two can play at that.
Tim came to her then, in the cold, rushing moments as she cut through vacuum, priming her nerves and weapons. She let him live there in them, let herself hurt as she saw the ring again. All this time and all the things they’d been through and he still couldn’t shake it—shake her. The Jesters weren’t enough, the war not enough. Me...what am I even in all of that?
Not enough...
She gave herself an angry shake. And that’s enough of that. Work to be done!
Her control console gave an angry blatt and yellow icons representing hunter-killers went red. “We have hostile target lock at extreme weapons range,” he AI reported without any hint of urgency.
“The tenders are augmenting their sensors with their own suites,” Kelly replied. “We’ve got to take them out them quick!” She keyed the channel she shared with her wing. “Lock missiles on the lead formation, and prepare to fire, single-pack spreads only.”
“That won’t get ‘em all,” her Second Squad Leader, Matyszak, pointed out tersely.
“Just scramble them and keep going. The drone tenders are the prize.”
Space flickered and azure streaks jolted through their formation, in singles at first, then a storm that pummeled deflectors white hot.
Kelly thumbed the weapons selector to scatter-packs and stroked the trigger. The eight-rocket spread blossomed forth into the path of the onrushing drones, was joined in a second by like patterns from the others. “Reinforce the forward shields!” she barked at her AI while toggling to particle cannons and squeezing the trigger.
Twin lightning bolts stabbed forth, even as scatter-pack missiles began splatting into oblivion before the drones’ defensive flail. Bolts glanced off Kelly’s shields. She fired again and a hell-blossom of exploding hunter-killer rewarded her. But proximity alarms squalled as survivors of the opening volleys shot through the fire garden of explosion to slice in amongst the Hellhounds. She banked to let one streak by and goosed the thrusters.
“Harrison Wing, come on!”
On the aft display, drones rushed on towards the cluster of transports like hyper-driven hawks seeking wounded prey. For a moment, Kelly’s headlong charge almost looked like criminal negligence. Then the reserve fighters and Basilisks opened up with a spray of missiles like the grand finale to a fireworks show in hell.
Coming in at full strafing speed, the hunter-killers had no margin for counter-move, rushed straight into a brick wall of firepower and shattered just as suddenly. A handful of dazed survivors scattered free and the reserve Hellhounds pounced, the hunt suddenly reversed and the Jesters upon their bloodied prey with streaks and antimatter blasts.
A flurry of azure fire drew Kelly’s attention back to the fore. The second wave of drones, seeing the demise of their peers and their AI’s belatedly calculating Kelly’s plan, rushed out to meet her wing.
“Let ‘em have it!”
Kelly thumbed control back to missiles and let loose with a second spray. Their targets were approaching so fast she hardly had to wait before explosions walked across space before her, joined by a rash of annihilation as her comrades’ volleys seethed through the hunter-killers and found their marks.
A drone lashed by so close Kelly saw the inverted pyramid symbol of Syntar emblazoned on its stubby fuselage. She punched he thrusters and kept going, following the stabbing flashes of heavier cannon down to their source. The tenders would hardly stand up to a fight with a traditional capital ship, but they’d been well-prepared to hold off star fighters.
They demonstrated this as Kelly dove in on the ship to port and its hull glimmered with electric sparks—muzzle flashes from gauss cannon, flinging streams of thumbnail-sized slugs at obscene velocities. Her shields shivered in the storm, no individual hit a threat, but dozens of them draining her defenses and snowing her sensors.
Targeting halos lit over the tender’s silhouette and went crimson. Kelly stroked the trigger and tore the stick to port, veered the Hellhound out of its dive as missiles plunged home. Explosions fountained across the ship’s deflector screens, for an instant looked as though they engulf Kelly. She streaked through a smear of plasma, shuddered violently once, and stars opened up before her.
A glance once to the aft display showed the tender unscathed—but only for a moment. Jester scatter-packs vomited as Kelly’s wing jumped it, showering the tender in destruction. Its shields died in a cascade of sparks and warheads punched through to rend hull. Inferno devoured it, though no climactic fusion core breach highlighted its demise, only a spray of embers expanding away from quickly-dying fires.
Her Jesters darted from the gutted tender to its partner like wolves tracking a blood trail. She followed them in, but they’d already begun the feast. Scatter-packs rippled with launch trails and energy weapons spat lightning. The faint nimbus of the second tender’s shield, fluttered under the punishment, intensified till the energetic globe of its protective field seemed a near-solid thing. That cocoon of protection shattered under the Jesters’ repeated blows and the winding streaks of missiles writhed through. Destruction followed.
Kelly peeled away as the tender joined its partner in oblivion. Hunter-killers spun apart in slag and debris wherever she looked. Hellhounds prowled for kill and found empty space. The transports and their consorts were sailing through to the growing sphere of Loudon.
“That can’t be it,” Matyszak said over the tactical network.
Kelly scanned her display. The group hovering around the docks held back still, showed no sign of intervention. “They’re not even attempting to block our approach.”
“Should we take them?”
She calculated their odds. Three more drone tenders and their fighters waited there, along with three heavier Syntar ships, including one that looked to be the equivalent of a Navy cruiser—not a cakewalk, for sure. But they couldn’t just leave them watching as they unloaded. Certainly Syntar would try to stop them.
But maybe that’s what they’re counting on us thinking, she thought. And she remembered Red and Tim, still on their way. Kelly ground her teeth. Like she’d told Red, this was always going to be the trickiest part.
“Harrison Wing, reform around the transports, loose formation. First Squad, take up flanking position should that group in orbit attempt to interfere.” She touched the hologram of Jerry’s transport. “Jerry, we’re going to hold position upon reaching upper orbit, cover you from above. If they rush you, we’ll be in their way.”
“Understood,” the former—and now once-again—helmsman replied. “I can’t say that I like the approach, though, Commander.”
Kelly chuckled humorlessly. “What’s to like?”
THE DYNAMARK FOUGHT Jerry’s control as it finished its fiery reentry and began to cool in Loudon’s upper skies. But the junk pile held together. “Did better than I thought it would!” he called over his shoulder to Mr. Jones.
The AGH man didn’t reply, kept his focus on the systems screens—and more than that, Jerry figured; he was terrified.
No shame in that.
The console pinged and a fresh globular popped up, a map of a coastline and a single icon winking from it. “That’s the beacon,” Cory said from beside him. “Our approach is just about perfect.” She frowned as another light blinked from the instrument panel. “We’ve got a transmission coming in from the surface.”
“That must be our contact. Put them up, kid.”
Another hologram shivered tentatively to life in the air before them. Jerry recognized the mustachioed man in the jagged image from the ghostly transmissions he and Cory had seen before. This time he wore smudged fatigues and cradled an abused-looking helmet under one arm. But the determination—almost fanaticism—in his near-black eyes was the same.
“This is Ground One,” he said, cupping a hand to an ear. A glint of metal betrayed an ear piece and microphone there. “Is that Jester One? We are receiving your transponder signal.”
Jerry hit a control. “This is Jester One. We are reading you.”
The man nodded shakily, as if he wanted to believe what he was hearing, but couldn’t quite do it. Behind him, figures in similar garb rushed back and forth. Jerry saw stacked containers, but also a hover pallet and pack animals that looked like horses but didn’t seem quite right, some sort of Loudon breed.
“Sure are glad to see you guys,” mustachioed man was saying. “We...we weren’t sure you’d make it.” Someone was saying something to him off-camera and he nodded. “Our lookouts are showing clear skies and no sign of ground interference.” His expression twisted into something uglier. “Don’t expect that to last.”
“Oh, we don’t,” Jerry replied. “We brought along friends in that case.”
“The bastards have been bombing the mountains with those cursed drones fighters of theirs,” the man on the ground said. “We won’t have a lot of time. You’d better hurry.”
“We’ll be down in” Jerry checked his instruments “five minutes, friend!”
The man nodded again, seemed almost to believe now. “We’ll be expecting you.”
“See you soon!” Jerry switched channels and another globular materialized to show Josie Wheeler in the hold. “Hope you’re ready, Josie!”
“We’ve made contact?”
“I just talked to them. They say the approach is open.”
“It won’t stay that way.”
“That’s what they said.”
“All right.” She flipped the visor of her Raider helm down. “Sorry we didn’t get a chance for that dance lesson on the way out, Rodann.”
He smirked but suddenly wished the helmet wasn’t hiding her merry green eyes. “Maybe another time.”
“Sounds like a promise!”
Her hologram winked out.
Alarms warbled and a tactical hologram superimposed itself over all the others. Tracks scrawled up and over the curve of the planet, began to wind down towards them, dozens of them. The war book program needlessly threw up a schematic of a Syntar tracking missile.
“Jerry...”
“I see ‘em, kid!” He could hear Jones panting till he nearly wheezed. The guy was going to hyperventilate. But a glance over the shoulder showed him leaned over his displays in concentration, despite a face slick with sweat.
“Rodann,” Kannidy called across the tactical network, “we’ve get pests!”
“You’re going to do something about them, right?”
“Already.”
Two of the Basilisks lumbered out of formation and banked across the wispy skyline. A moment later, both fluttered with flames and vapor clouds sheathed them, what would’ve been a brief flicker in space made into a crazed contrail pattern in the atmosphere as their scatter-packs fired. Jerry felt the roar of their launch through the Dynamark’s hull.
Jerry keyed another channel as he kept a half-an-eye on the missile drama. “Kelly, it’s starting to get serious.”
“I see it,” she replied, audio only and crackling from atmospheric interference. “Third Flight is on their way.”
“Sure be nice if the back door was still open when it comes time for us to leave!”
“I understand, Jerry,” she replied in her once-crisis-at-a-time-please voice.
On the tactical hologram, the missile blossoms expanded out like pseudopods to envelop the onrushing Syntar fusillade. They met in the stratosphere with titanic flashes and fireballs that scrawled across the heavens. The violence of it, normally flicks of light on a hologram and silence across vacuum, shook Jerry. Behind him, Jones nearly wheezed with fright.
Totally understandable...totally.
Suddenly, mountains were looming up beneath them and Jerry was rushing to feather their ventral thruster, slow their descent. The Dynamark gave a truly unpleasant shiver and things rattling loose somewhere like ball bearings in a can. The clamor went on as Loudon’s gravity suddenly seemed to reach up and grip the transport. A vicious crosswind lashed the Dynamark’s ungainly rectangular hull and shoved it starboards, nearly into one of its sister vessels.
“Jerry...?”
“Hang on!”
Jerry bit down as concentration consumed his entire focus, the battle forgotten, only crags to one side and seas to the other. He had a moment of real, plummeting panic, like the first time he’d helmed a hauler into a particularly tight berth and nearly ripped his flanks off. Add on top of that there wasn’t a landing pad below, or even a cleared strip, just open beach whipped into haze by wind-churned sand.
But there was a lot of motion.
“Time to get those landing gears down, Jones!”
“Working on it.”
The Dynamark groaned as its belly plates peeled open to extend a trio of spindly, four-fingered gears. The wind caught in the extra drag, gave the whole ship a last moment wobble. Below, dozens of figures scrambled as it looked like the transport might lose control. But Jerry had it, not pretty—but a last flood of power to the ventrals flattened their final ten meters of drop and they settled with a clank of sagging gears.
“All right!” Jerry slapped his armrests with a burst of releasing tension. Hands flew back to the controls, killing power to the engines. “We’re down. Get that hold opened up Jones.” When the AGH man didn’t reply, Jerry twisted about in his chair. “Jones?”
He twitched as though struck with a spark, flecks of sweat flicking off his shining face as he leaned over the console. “I...I got it.”
The transport groaned once more as its flanks opened and wind howled in, along with a babble of voices. Even from the bridge, Jerry could hear Wheeler’s hollering. From one of the waist holocameras he had a view of the exterior, displaying from a secondary globular. The Raider leader was striding down the loading ramp, gesturing with the confidence of a former noncom, a blastrifle cradled casually in her other hand—but not so at ease it couldn’t be brought to work if things got desperate.
