Hell or Highwater (Hell's Jesters, #5), page 28
The pressure eased as Jeanie let off the thrusters and evened out the power to the Hellhound’s systems. Still sluggish, Tim touched the communicator. “Watkins Wing, is there anyone out there?”
“Catching up to you now,” Cory chirped from his earbud.
Tim blew out a breath of relief. But it faded as only three more Hellhounds pinged in response, pulling up alongside him and Cory. Five left? “Can anyone see anybody else?” he asked. “Any sign of Second Squadron? Red’s wing?”
“There’s too much out there,” Cory replied, and the others confirmed.
“Jeanie?”
“Sensors are scrambled, Tim,” the AI said. “And the explosions have actually altered the ‘geography’, if you will. Nothing’s where it was, when we first took readings, and everything’s in motion. That’s why I took us clear of it, to try to find something the sensors could recognize.”
“Tripwire Station?” Tim asked with a sudden clenching of fear.
“Still there,” Jeanie replied, and the tactical winked, pulled in to show the icon of the former-mining station. “We don’t appear to have pursuers. I’d suggest we make our way there, to regroup.”
“I think that makes a hell of a lot of sense, Jeanie. Set course.”
“We’re already on it.”
The five Hellhounds skimmed the inner edge of the debris field—if such a hazy boundary could be said to have a beginning or end. On the tactical, the Alliance task force slugged away at the quadrant of asteroid belt behind them. It wasn’t hard to imagine a near-rage in the punishment, born of their inability to end the repeated stings of the Jesters. It also wasn’t hard to see the futility of it. Tim wondered how many of their own Valkyries had gotten inadvertently caught in the devastation.
“Got something,” Cory piped up. “This is strange.”
“What is, kid?”
Her pause filled him with inexplicable dread. “Focus sensors towards the South Gap. Are those hyperspace emissions?”
“What?”
Tim touched the tactical globular and moved its orientation to the Gap, zoomed in on it. Blue-white halos fluttered there. A lot of them. As he watched, Jeanie worked a pointer over one of the icons that materialized, caused a war book schematic to pop out. The image within it sent a sickening jolt to Tim’s core.
“Not Union,” Jeanie said. “Gravity drive signature suggests a Retribution-class battlecruiser.” Her pointer bounced over others as they solidified and the long-range sensors took them in. “Multiple battlecruisers and supporting ships. Alliance.”
Tim started to reply twice and couldn’t find the words. Finally, “How far from us?”
“We could alter course to intercept at fifty degrees to their current trajectory in eleven minutes,” Jeanie replied. She took control of the tactical, pulled it out and displayed dotted white lines, the course of the Alliance newcomers, the proposed Jester intercept course, and their positions, relative to the fight further down-system.
“Flank attack,” Cory gasped in Tim’s earbud. “They’ll hit Greer just as he’s beginning to hit back at the Fringe World Fleet.”
“Do they see them?” Tim demanded.
“It’s possible they do, by now.”
“Let’s make sure. Give me the open Union channel and boost it with available power.”
“That will point us out to anyone watching,” Jeanie replied.
“No help for it. And see if we can ping any other Jesters. We can’t just let these new guys waltz right in like this.”
“You want to attack?” Cory asked with unvarnished shock.
“I don’t know what I want to do, yet. But we’ve got to do something. Jeanie, you got that channel ready for me?”
“Go ahead.”
“Union Fleet, this is Jester Watkins Two-One,” Tim called into the mic, “we’ve got a lot of bogies coming out of hyper at the Galactic South Gap. Are you seeing this? Repeat...”
KELLY BROUGHT HER MARAUDER alongside the smoldering hulk of the Sacramento, sickened at the cloud of shrapnel and still-escaping fumes hanging about the old girl. But the ship was still there, still fighting—for her life now.
“Confirm, Slasher Leader,” the radio orderly said through a crackle of static, sounding endlessly weary. “You are re-assigned a berth aboard Ludlow until we have restored flight operations to the Number One gantry.”
“Ludlow’s full up,” Kelly replied, and glanced at the roster globular. “I’ve got two Marauders pretty shot up and almost no one with scatter-packs left.”
“Understood,” the orderly replied with resignation. “Your orders stand.”
“Roger, Sacramento.” Kelly switched channels. “You all heard that, Slashers. Sounds like we’re going to waiting in line for a bit.”
“Maybe even longer that,” Himari spoke up. “Jesus, look.”
In the void between Surigao and the outer orbits of the system, titans dueled. The Fringe World battle line was coming on with no subtlety and Greer was meeting it, turning the vacuum into a torrent of hellfire. Ships that cost more than the GDP of whole star systems—that housed the equivalent of small-town populations in their hulls—smeared away in that holocaust, as though they’d been nothing. Vessels that had strode the space lanes like gods were crucified on shafts of world-ending fire.
But a shift in Kelly’s globular and an insistent blink told her that wasn’t what Himari was talking about. The tactical shifted at the other pilot’s insistence, focused far off to the Galactic South quadrant.
“—is Jester Watkins Two-One...”
Kelly flinched as though slapped. Distorted by distance and snarled by static, it had none of his usual drawl. But she could very clearly hear Tim Watkins’ voice in the communicator, broadcasting out in the open. He’s there! Really there! Alive! Shock became a glow of something she couldn’t even describe, a fierce surge of gratitude and love blurring into one pulse-pounding moment that took her breath away.
But she heard the fear in his voice, too.
And she saw, now, what had caught Himari’s attention—what every sensor in the Union fleet had to be picking up.
“—are you seeing this?”
CALVIN BUTO SMOOTHED his hair back at the temple and willed himself not to break into a sweat as he glowered into the tactical hologram. “Repeat that, Captain.”
Tad Mitson, commanding the super-heavy battlecruiser, Immolator, half-turned in his chair to look at the Admiral of the Rimward Fleet. “Sensors are re-calibrated from the jump, sir, and they’ve confirmed: we’re early.”
Buto blinked and smoothed the hair back from his other ear. A glance showed him the analog mission counter, but the damned thing was fluttering sporadically. “How?”
“Vagaries of hyperspace transition,” Mitson replied. “We are jumping through time and space, sir.”
“I meant how early, Captain,” Buto snapped at the man.
He couldn’t help it. Standing on the bridge of the Immolator felt wrong, somehow, like putting on another man’s shoe. And that wasn’t entirely inaccurate. The battlecruiser had only just finished its refit and shakeout cruise before he claimed it as his flag, the most modern warship available to his command. It’d been nearly destroyed at the Battle of Loudon, left a half-flaming wreck that’d taken nearly a year to repurpose. The Admiralty hadn’t wanted to scrap her, there only being five Retribution-classes left, and the costs of building from scratch, let alone the time—well, who could blame them?
But it felt wrong. And it had been Geiger’s ship. Most of his old crew had rotated out—no small number of its officers run out of the service for their part in his crimes. And there was nearly as much new to the hull as original, included improved weapons and shields. But it felt like his. Buto had known Geiger, the slime. This ship felt dirty.
“One hundred and thirty-eight minutes,” Mitson replied, “judging by local conditions.” With a hint of defensiveness, “It’s just within normal hyperspace deviation standards, sir.”
Severson would be coasting to the edge of the system by now, Buto thought. But he’d still be two hours out. This damned plan! Everything was about the timing.
“How badly scattered are we?” he asked, throat suddenly dry. He cleared it. “Did everyone come through early?”
The tactical glimmered and a host of icons coasted down the gravity well alongside Immolator. Further haloing of fresh emergences signaled more ships joining them.
“Looks like the deviation effected the fleet across the board,” Mitson said. “But all call-signs are coming through.”
Well, that’s something, at least.
“We’re getting a full picture, now, sir.”
The tactical swam for a moment and reoriented, the full details of Surigao System crystallizing in the air before him. Primary, planets, and asteroids were joined a moment later by the shimmer of starship icons. These flashed. Some burned.
Good God, it’s just like Severson said! Buto swallowed. The Rimward Fleet had breached the system at its Galactic Southern rim, passing through the large gap in the debris field and sailing down-system at what would be approximately Greer’s right flank. But the futility of judging where that flank—where any flank—was became instantly impossible as Buto took in the anarchy of battle.
“Picking up signals from Harrison,” the young officer at the communications station announced—Camilla, Buto recalled absently. “Fringe World Fleet is beginning to withdraw from the planet’s outer orbits.”
“That means they’re just beginning Phase Two,” Mitson said.
Which meant Harrison hadn’t had time to lure Greer out from Surigao. There’d be no scattering of the Union to take advantage of, ships clustering together in deadly scrums. It meant the Rimward Fleet crashing into a three-way pile-up where everyone saw everything coming, no surprise, everyone blasting away at everything at once.
“Admiral,” Mitson asked hesitantly, “shall we remain on course?”
Buto gulped again. A wild, screeching panic flailed in his guts, threatened to rupture free. A sour nausea built up at the back of his throat, leftovers of wine consumed with his staff in nervous, ill-advised quantities, last night.
“Sir,” Mitson pressed. “Do we continue down-system or do you want to issue a change in orders?”
Buto wanted to hit the man. Didn’t he see it? Change in orders? Was he serious? No turning back now. The plan is the plan. Timothy spelled it out clearly.
“Captain,” he replied in a voice so steady he was actually proud of himself. “No change in orders. Continue to execute the plan.”
“WHAT?” JERRY RECOILED from the creature in the high-backed chair. “You’re a Methuselah, too?”
“A Methuselah...” Anton cackled and made a mockingly-theatrical gesture. “Listen to you. Such silliness! Such fear.” He sagged back in his seat. “I don’t recall where the expression came from but, oh, how some of us adored it in the old days.”
“A survivor of the AI Wars,” Tina mused and shook her head. “The things you must have seen...”
“Everything I cared about destroyed over and over again,” Anton sighed bitterly. “That’s what I have seen, Miss Succubus. And now it looks to be happening again. But we won’t have a machine to blame for it, this time. We’ll have to own it, ourselves. Good, old-fashioned greed.”
“You’re talking about Noovin, again.”
“We’d stayed out of the affairs of mortals for the better part of a century,” Anton said. “Some of us continued to work from the shadows. Others faded, died by accident or illness or suicide—living forever isn’t a salve for all pains, you see. The Alliance proved a remarkably stable construct. But it started to come apart, as these things do. So, we got more involved.” He winced. “Noovin got more involved.”
“He got involved with Syntar Fleet Corporation,” Jerry growled.
“Yes, and that vile Bradley Boxer,” Anton replied. “Alexi was running out of money. Boxer saw the opportunity.” Lips skinned back from stained slivers. “The fool thought he owned Noovin. It’s a failing of the very wealthy that they think their money can buy anything. We of the Sabbat have devoured many such fools.”
“The Sabbat?” Josie asked.
“Oh, yes, another of our theatric pretensions,” Anton said. “That’s what we called ourselves. What decadence.” He looked at her. “The Sabbat are those Methuselahs that continued to meddle in the mortal world. There were only nine, at last count, though some others may have simply disappeared, choosing not to play the games anymore.” His nostrils flared. “The smarter ones, they may have been.”
“Nine,” Tina gasped. “Are there others in the Chiaroscuro?”
“I am the only one,” he replied. “It is my special project.”
“And where does that put them?” she asked. “Are they with Noovin?”
He shrugged, caused his joints to crackle like a sack of bones being adjusted. “Who can say for certain? Some are, likely. Others will remain unaligned, will try to ride things out, as they have done so many times before.” He paused. “Perhaps as I should have done.”
“You said you tried to convince Greer to do that very thing,” Jerry said. “Why are you going against your own advice now?”
Anton considered him with his empty eyes. But a flicker of emotion limned those voids. “We worked so hard to rebuild. And there were never very many of us. And we were hunted, you see, hunted at first by the machines that survived the War, then hated by the mortals who climbed out of the wreckage of what we’d wrought. We could only ever nudge events in certain directions. And we didn’t always agree. And it was such a long, long game.”
He slammed a fist down upon one of the armrests. “And now he’d burn it all down, the bastard! For something as fleeting as power!” He looked around at all of them, wild suddenly, a tendril of spit drooled from his fangs, unnoticed. “Power over what, I ask you? Rulership over an ash heap?”
Jerry looked over at Tina, then at Josie, then back at their inhuman host.
“You see,” Anton went on, wiping at his mouth, “that’s what the Sabbat didn’t understand—what I didn’t understand. Alexi isn’t trying to save the Alliance. He’s trying to save the parts that will bow down to him. The rest, he’ll let collapse back into a feral state, a Dark Age. His new regime, with him at its top, will simply sweep back in, after however long that collapse takes, and dominate.”
“However long that takes...” Jerry muttered. “How many will die waiting for that to happen?”
Anton nodded. “You see it now, my young friend. Alexi Noovin would let half a trillion souls perish so he could lord over the few billion that would remain.”
“So, you’re an altruist, after all?” Tina asked.
He offered her that hideous, yellow smile. “I’m a pragmatist. What good does it do to pull the strings of mortal affairs if there are no mortals left alive?”
“Then show us,” Tina said. “Show us what will convince the galaxy to turn on him.”
Anton leaned forward, producing a remote-control wand from within a sleeve that he pointed into the air. With a click he produced a globular that filled with lines of text and tables. Diagrams materialized beside these, flow charts that showed names in the boxes and lines connecting them that seemed to indicate the movement of funds.
“The AIB would love to have gotten their hands on these,” he said. “Forensic accounting records, tracing illegal contributions to Alexi’s previous High Council seat campaign from Syntar Fleet Corporation, and from Bradley Boxer, personally.” Anton’s bushy white eyebrows beetled up. “And this second set are funds for his current campaign, from Omnipresent Media, from Zebulon Blaster Weapons, and others.”
“You had this all and didn’t turn it over?” Jerry asked suspiciously.
Anton tittered. “The means by which I came into possession of these were not exactly legal, themselves. Better an anonymous tranche from outside the Alliance, don’t you think?”
“Sure,” Tina said. “What else you got?”
Anton nodded and pointed the wand. The hologram blurred and refocused. Now within the globular floated a grainy still that suddenly lurched into a video replay. The man within it looked vaguely familiar, standing before a half-constructed building while the superstructures of more skyscrapers crawled heavenward behind him.
With a jolt, Jerry realized the man was High Councilor Noovin.
But he was different, and no High Counilor, here, giving a speech that Anton had left muted, in a suit of long-outmoded style with black hair and eyebrows. Behind him, others in the same kind of ancient dress stood ready for what looked like a ribbon-cutting ceremony. But the speaker was definitely the same man.
“Noovin as his own ‘father’,” Anton chuckled softly, “founding the construction firms that helped revitalize the mega-metropolises of Nova Terra, a hundred and ten years ago.”
He clicked the wand again and the pictures shifted. Within the globular, another iteration of Noovin—this one thin from privation and raggedly-clad in work clothes that looked singed—stood before a crowd crammed into a narrow starship hold. The throng was hollow-eyed with shock, many looking as though they’d collapse, except they were so tightly-packed they couldn’t. Noovin was, once more, speechifying.
“Always loved the sound of his own voice,” Anton muttered. “This one’s from right after the destruction of Old Earth. This is First Diaspora footage, on the way out from Sol on what were laughably inefficient hyperdrives. We were stacked up in that tube for a month before making planetfall.”
“We?” Josie asked.
Anton nodded and pointed the wand. A click caused the recording to pause and zoomed the badly degraded image in on a man in the front row of the mob, obviously standing in support of Noovin. There was no mistaking the younger Anton’s rat-like stoop and frame.
“You can’t imagine the stench in there,” he said, and shivered. “People died where they stood, rotted right there. But we were all together, then, united in desperation and misery. Alexi wasn’t so bad in those days. But he was grasping.”
