Hell or Highwater (Hell's Jesters, #5), page 21
“You’ve tangled with those before, Anisa,” Harrison spoke up.
“And we’re ready for a rematch,” she replied with a hint of smile.
Harrison returned it as the temperature of his audience rose. There was steel glinting in their eyes, now, to counter the dread. They’d been wanting this since the disappointments of the last couple months. Greer was coming out to fight, out in the open. He’d have to.
“I have no doubt,” Harrison said. “But it’ll be a stiff fight, no matter. We could be facing the balance of the Union Fleet, there, people. We’re going to attack with everything we’ve got, but make no mistake, the odds of actually taking and holding the system are likely to be beyond our strength.”
That cooled the rising fervor.
Quickly, Harrison pointed at the hologram and, again, Omura worked the controls. The starfighters sortied against the planet and withdrew quickly, falling back through the approaching Fringe World Fleet to their carriers. A crescent formation of icons blinked as they did. “Admiral Murakama, your Heavy Group, now designated Task Force Thunder, will receive Greer’s answer to our attack, when it comes. I expect his fighters to be badly scrambled after our initial attack and he’ll have to bring up his own heavies to press the advantage.”
“A big gun fight,” she said.
“That’s right,” Harrison replied with a slight baring of the teeth. He thought of the great monsters of space, the heavy cruisers and battlecruisers, coming together in a duel of hideous beauty. He knew the lie of it, knew from too many disasters how quickly it’d just devolve into butchery. But it still stirred the blood. “As with the starfighter strikes, your goal is damaging Greer, not defeating him.”
“We can take them,” Murakama insisted.
“I have no doubt,” Harrison said. “And if opportunity presents, you may press any local advantage. But don’t lose sight of the larger plan” he looked all around the room “any of you. Our goal is wear Greer out and draw him apart.”
“We’ll be on our own,” Nagumo spoke up, “like you said, sir. Fighting what might be the entire Union Fleet, until Severson arrives.”
“That’s right.” Harrison didn’t quite keep the bitterness out of his tone. “This will possibly be the largest fleet engagement of the war. In fact, it’s our job to make it so. Greer has to believe he’s facing the hardest attack of his life.” He paused, met the gazes of each of his commanders. “And then he has to believe he’s stood it off and has us falling back, to the edge of the system.”
The hologram shifted again, the icons representing Murakama’s force withdrawing on the rest of the fleet, where they bunched and regrouped with their backs to the asteroid belt.
“We’ll all be worn out by then,” Harrison said. “And that’ll be the hardest part, people. There’ll be no withdrawal. We’ll have to stand and fight in place, for as long as it takes for Severson to execute the rest of the plan.”
What went unsaid, what Harrison had thought every hour since he’d since the early drafts of the scheme, was that Severson might blow it. That the Fringe World Fleet might be left high and dry, deep in enemy space, hounded by an enemy much closer to their bases and supply, and left with the choice to stay and continue to suffer damage, or save what they could and flee.
And, then, disaster.
“We will be on our own,” Harrison repeated for what he swore would be the last time. “But, you know, friends; I wouldn’t be stuck alone with anyone but you.”
Fragile smiles appeared.
“We’re the Fringe World Fleet. And at Surigao, we’re going remind the galaxy exactly what that means!”
THE ROLLERCOASTER DROP sensation of being catapulted from the Sacramento slammed through Kelly for a screaming, almost thrilling moment before the inertial compensators caught up. Then she was rocketing out into space with the Slashers streaking out after her.
“Welcome to Surigao!” she called into the communicator.
Acknowledgements pinged back to her, one after another, the icons of her squadron winking in the tactical display as they sorted themselves out. They were quickly joined by others, many others, as hyperspace emissions haloed across the void. The Sacramento was the duty carrier and the Slashers had near space combat patrol, screening the fleet as it re-emerged from the alternate reality.
And fleet was right. Kelly let herself have a couple seconds to just take it in. She had seen the newborn Union fleet at Junction in what could then be called its entirety. That had been a truly cobbled-together affair, planetary militia squadrons alongside Alliance deserters, all of them rushed to the point of crisis. There had been no homogeneity, then, and little coordination. Just a frantic scrambling in defense of a world.
But the units of starships issuing forth from hyper, this day, were a completely different matter. Two-and-a-half years of fighting had burned away the dregs, left a steely, deadly machine. Once-outdated militia cruisers had been updated in Union docks with improved weaponry and modernized propulsion. Alongside these came next-generation ships of the line, cranked out of Union industry, Traveler-series heavy cruisers, the sleek and deadly Panther-class destroyers, and, of course, a duo of the brand new Gallaton-class strike carriers.
Gallaton, Kelly thought with a twinge, knowing the planet and the events there better than probably most of the young men and women at stations and in cockpits throughout the armada. Where it all started. And where would it all end...? Who the hell knew?
There was still plenty of the hodge-podge to the Union Fleet, certainly. The old Sacramento exemplified that as much as any of the heavily-modified last-generation starships that still made up at two thirds of the formations coasting down the gravity well. But Kelly didn’t think she’d ever seen the near-entirety of it before, Greer’s masterpiece, the full complement of the Union’s effort splayed out across the stars like this.
“That’s a hell of a sight,” Himari’s voice said in Kelly’s earbud.
“Sure is,” she replied.
And there were still more coming, the edge of the system sizzling with fresh hyperspace emissions, some of these coming in from new angles, some rather far-flung. And they’d be arriving for hours, still, in surges and in dribs and drabs. Greer had sent out the call, but answering it across parsecs of space—even when everyone knew it was coming—still took time.
Kelly experienced a surge of anxiety and checked her scopes. If there was ever a moment when this whole endeavor would be vulnerable to utter ruin, this would be it, scattered by re-entry, disoriented. But her eyes and sensors found nothing nearby, just the glint of the primary and the gentle wheel of its planets around it—Surigao, itself, blinking cheerily blue—while the vast, irregular donut of the debris field circled at distance.
“Shake yourselves out, Slashers,” Kelly announced. “Long-range sensors are coming back with nothing, so far, but we’ve still got a job to do!”
Again, acknowledgements echoed back, flight leaders ready. They were all ready.
“Break off by flights,” she commanded. “You have the coordinates from the Sacramento. Cover your quadrants. Maintain constant contact. And watch for more friendlies.”
More friendlies. Kelly couldn’t help wondering if they were here. Greer looked to be calling in all his favors. No reason to think the Jesters wouldn’t be in on this, too. It had the feel of a final gamble, a last hand of cards, a frantic wager thrown down to restore fortunes. And that sort of thing screamed for the Jesters.
But she couldn’t let herself think of them—or any one of them.
“Let’s get this done, people,” she said into her helmet mic, surprised by the emotion that came out. “Good luck!”
“STARFIGHTERS ARE AWAY,” Commander Arrian reported from his perch behind the tactical station on the bridge of the Ludlow. “Starting to get a picture. Looks like all’s clear so far, Admiral.”
Greer nodded at that as he paced behind the captain’s chair, for a moment intensely missing his old haunt on the Concordia. But Ludlow was a solid ship, and as good a place for his flag as any. He halted his course and nodded to Arrian before turning to fully stare into the huge hologram spread across the front of the compartment.
The fleet was coming together slowly, as they neared Surigao. He allowed himself a moment of pride, taking them in, before turning that appraisal cold. Against the vastness of space, they still seemed so little, flocks of icons swirling towards a point of light, fragile, man-made whimsies against the faceless, elemental endlessness. And soon he’d fling them against an equally man-made construct—and then there’d be a lot less of those flecks of light.
Mistake.
He let the word have its moment, echoing in his skull. He couldn’t help it. For all that they’d faced the Alliance many times out in the open like this, he’d rarely risked so much of the Union’s strength in one place. It was the cardinal sin of the outnumbered; trying to change the odds with bluster, aggression. Desperation.
But, no. That was enough.
A ping from the tactical sent a flinch through Greer, through the entire bridge crew. A single hyperspace emission was rippling from the Galactic East edge of the system—from the direction the Alliance was most likely to emerge.
“What is that?” Greer demanded hoarsely.
“Waiting on sensor data,” Captain Anita Kelin, commanding the Ludlow, replied in an eerily calm voice. She’d captained an Alliance light carrier, in the Before Times, and a Union escort carrier after that. She was known for that calm and her pronouncement was as much a warning to Greer as to her edgy crew.
“War book coming up now,” Arrian announced.
A globular materialized beside the still-settling ripple of hyperspace emergence and the blip that had come from it. The holographic schematic showed an ugly, cigar-shaped chassis and Greer felt his nerves unknot.
“Hyperspace message pod,” Arrian said unnecessarily. “One of ours, by the transponder. Transmission coming in from it now.”
Greer grunted wordlessly and folded his arms, scoured the tactical display with his eyes. He almost willed the void beyond the system to remain empty, the Fates to grant him just a little more time, to gather his force, to sort themselves out, to be ready. Favor us, he pled with whatever deity might reign invisibly over the space lanes, for once, please, favor us.
Arrian had strolled along the aft curve of the bridge and was standing now at the shoulder of the communications tech. “It’s from the Herakles, Admiral.”
Greer nodded. It was as expected. The stealth corvette had been lingering at the periphery of Coronado, watching.
“Large Alliance formations have begun leaving their staging areas,” Arrian reported. “The departures have exited by multiple different trajectories. But they have been at regular intervals. Captain Petrie believes this has been to thrown off tracking.”
“Almost assuredly,” Greer growled. “Petrie has left Coronado, then?”
“Aye, sir.”
“Then this is the beginning.”
“A direct hyperspace jump would put them here in ten hours, sir,” Arrian said. “If the pod left just as the first of them were leaving, they could be here within an hour.”
Greer shook his head. “Different trajectories, you said, Commander. No. Harrison’s going to take his time. This will be like Bolingbroke or Fury. It’s a ballet for him.” Greer made a mocking flutter with his arms, like he was dancing. “Everything will have its step and place.”
His eye went to the shark swarm of icons congealing off to the Union fleet’s right flank. The Panthers grouped into their over a dozen-ship formation—DESRON 1, as noted on the TOS. Greer had a few dance steps ready for good, old Nehemiah, himself. When to use the cloak-destroyers, he wasn’t quite sure. But of the shock they’d cause, he was certain.
“Inform all commands,” Greer told Arrian. “And tell them to continue pre-determined deployment with all possible speed.”
“Aye, sir.”
And speaking of surprises... “Commander, we were expecting some other guests to the ball,” Greer said. “Have the First Irregulars arrived in-system, yet?”
“As a matter of fact, sir, we had a transmission from them, practically as we left hyper.”
Greer’s eyebrows shot up. “How unusually punctual of our Jester friends.” His gaze went back to the tactical, scanning out to the asteroid belt. The field was littered with mining facilities, old operations of United Industries from before the war, converted by Surigao’s citizenry after they declared for the Union. They’d make the belt a veritable briar patch for the Alliance, once they arrived.
The Jesters had been tasked to ensure that.
“Establish me a link to them,” Greer told Arrian. “We’ve got a little time.”
“ALL RIGHT,” TIM SHOUTED, “we’re about to fire up the artificial gravity! Everyone, hold on to something!”
He glanced around the abandoned command center of the Surigao Field Asteroid Station. Red had a grip on the handrail lining the chamber’s upper walkway, which ran along the duty stations across its octagonal back walls. Cory, standing on the opposite side of the circular operations station at its center, held one hand over its controls, and the other gripping at its edge as she looked up at him expectantly. Other Jester techs secured themselves with boots on the grated floors and hands up on the walls.
“Do it,” he told Cory.
She flipped the switch and, with a thrum of electrifying conduits, a blanket of weight suddenly came to rest upon Tim’s shoulders. At the same time, nausea jetted through his guts and he had to pinch his lips to keep it down. They pinched tighter as something crashed in the distance and someone swore.
“Thought I said everyone hold on,” he grumbled.
“Do we have communications up, yet?” Red asked in a voice a little uneven from the transition. “I want to make certain our Union friends don’t get jumpy when they notice the debris field is lousy with Jesters.”
“Working on it,” Cory replied, sounding completely unbothered. “Sensors are coming up, now, though. It was pretty nice of the people of Surigao to leave everything in such nice order when they evacuated.”
“Pretty nice of Greer to tell them they had to,” Red said with a grim little smile.
A hologram materialized above the operations station, displaying a map of the asteroid they’d docked a transport and no small number of Hellhounds upon. It was an uneven, pockmarked almost-pear shape, what would probably have passed as a small moon, had it orbited a planet. The station occupied one of its poles, dug into a craggy cliff facing into a kilometer-deep crater, and blinking on the hologram. Constructed to manage hauler traffic coming and going with transuranic ingot loads, it was a perfect staging area.
“Our patrols out yet?” Red asked, coming to stand beside the operations station and setting a hand upon it, obviously to steady herself.
“Got ‘em here,” Cory said, manipulating the station’s controls.
The view zoomed out to show a wide swath of the asteroid belt, their new hideaway a single strobe in the midst of it. Moving steadily away from this, smaller icons strew chains of blinking light behind them.
“That’s Second Squadron,” Tim said. “Matyszak’s crew, leaving sensor buoys. When they’re finished, there won’t be a centimeter of this part of the belt that isn’t under our observation.”
“Good,” Red replied and pointed at the hologram, “because Greer’s instructions say he wants that eyeballed, in particular.”
It wasn’t clear from the vast sprawl of shattered rock what ancient, astronomical cataclysm had created the field—perhaps a collision of planets on degrading orbits, their remains now moldering in a wide, silent grave circling their primary. What was more obvious was that the field might better be thought of as separate fields, or strata, drawn into rough alignment by the vagaries of gravity. And widely-open in a number of places.
Red’s gesture indicated one of these voids. “That’s the South Gap, as the locals call it. Greer’s nervous about that route.”
“Why that one?” Tim asked. “The field’s not that dense to start with. The Alliance can pretty much approach from any direction and make their way through.”
“It’s wide enough that a force hypering in at that point will still be safe from collision if they scatter on re-entry,” Cory guessed. “It’s one of the few places an attacker can force a surprise appearance.”
“Back door,” Tim mused. He looked at Red. “Or front door?”
She shook her head. “Don’t know.”
A blat came from the operations station. Cory looked over its displays, then at Red. “Intra-system transmission, encrypted. Looks like Greer’s call-sign.”
“Put it up.”
Cory touched a sequence of keys and the hologram shivered, morphed into another set of imagery, a familiar face, marred by pixelation. “Hello, Tripwire Station,” Greer called through static.
“Pretty sure that’s not this place’s name,” Red replied.
Greer paused. It took Tim a moment to realize it was time delay, not any hesitation of the Admiral’s. “No,” he said at last, “but that certainly will be its purpose...and yours.”
“How do you mean?” Red asked warily.
“I presume you have the majority of your Jesters in-system?” he asked, rather than answer. “And that you found the station and its surroundings as we described them?”
“We did,” she replied.
“That’s good,” Greer said, after another time-delay pause, “because your purpose here, Captain, is to harass. To distract. We’re not sure what route Harrison will take, but you’re positioned along Surigao’s Galactic Southeast rim, nearest the approach from Coronado. It seems likeliest he will come from that direction.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“We have other distractions for that.” Greer’s smile through the hologram had an imp’s murderous glee. “And, if not, you’ll receive alternative instructions. But let’s presume, for now, the simplest course is the one Harrison will follow. I don’t need lots of kills or damaged ships. I need the Alliance jumpy, watching their back, wasting resources to cover flanks. Every little bit helps. You perhaps know of the concept of ‘friction’ in war?”
