Hell or Highwater (Hell's Jesters, #5), page 37
She gave thanks to whatever senile, sadistic god ruled the space ways that she and Tim had gotten their moment.
Because she was pretty sure there wouldn’t be another.
WITH THE BACK OF HIS hand, Buck Harrison wiped sweat from his upper lip as he watched icons streak into the midst of the Foundation Fleet.
“We count over thirty rebel starfighters!” Goya was saying from his side, the man’s voice climbing an octave. “More on the way!”
A faint shiver went through the deck plates under Buck’s boots. Rationally, he knew that was likely more missiles leaving their racks, not any kind of damage. But the squirm he felt in his guts was echoed by a chorus of suppressed groans around him as the CIC’s other occupants steadied themselves against it.
“How are they getting through?” Severson demanded in a voice approaching shrill. “Why aren’t our weapons having an effect?”
Buck watched the blip of an attacking fighter blow out against the stars like a gobbet of petrol touched by a match and knew they were. But without covering fighters, enemy ships were going to get through, no matter how much firepower got flung out. That was part of battle in deep space.
Of course, Severson had never experienced this before.
A Union starfighter—one of those infernal Marauders—was looping into the midst of the fleet, heading right for the Annihilator. With preternatural speed and agility, it dodged a storm of blaster fire, flipped end-over-end to shoot a missile off its tail, then flipped back to face them in time to unleash a multiple scatter-pack spread. A dozen tendrils sizzled out across the vacuum as the fighter pulled out of its run.
“Kill those,” Severson snapped as a proximity alarm wailed somewhere. “Kill them!”
The Annihilator’s point-defenses vomited into the missiles’ paths, joined by torrents from the destroyer escorting her off to starboard. Scatter-pack projectiles pulsed into flame in a daisy-chain pattern that blistered closer, closer. Most didn’t get close. But—
The flagship shook again, this time with something not of its own making. Cabin lights fluttered. Pixelation snowed across the huge tactical hologram before it steadied. The Annihilator’s shields shimmered for a full second.
“We’re hit?” Severson near-screeched. He stabbed the comm button on the table before him. “Bridge! Damage report!”
“Multiple hits to the starboard shields,” a voice answered steadily. “Minor feedback damage to projector coils. Holding at seventy percent.”
Severson killed the comm with a flick and smoothed hair back from his brow, muttering, “Close one.”
But it wasn’t, Buck knew. These attacks were frantic, desperate. But they weren’t going to stop the Alliance juggernaut on their own. His gaze went to the heavier Union vessels, massing over Surigao behind the wild fighter melee. They were going to be a greater test.
“Hit!” Goya exclaimed, pointing into the hologram. “The Crusader! She’s hit!”
Gasps flittered through the CIC as Buck found the stricken vessel in the imagery. A light cruiser, the old Crusader was nominally a fast scout ship, outdated for a mission now largely-dominated by starfighters and poorly under-armed to deal with them. A Marauder missile flurry had blown out its shields and a long smear of escaping atmosphere and debris trailed out behind it as its energy emissions flickered.
“Jesus...” Severson exhaled and turned his shivering gaze upon Goya and Buck. “This is stiffer resistance than we expected. Appraisal?”
“Maintain course, sir,” Buck replied before he could think better of it.
Severson’s eyes flicked towards Goya and Buck could feel his superior’s pulse of rage beside him. But in a voice that didn’t quite shiver, the Tactical Chief said, “Concur with the Commander. They can’t keep this up.”
They could, Buck kept to himself. They very well may. But we can’t stop. That’s how it goes. We have to stick with it, no matter the loss. He knew. He’d seen it before.
Severson was nodding. A shimmer of sweat lined the edge of his hair. He seemed to notice and wiped it away. He touched the comm control. “Message and orders, bridge. Detach the Fulminator to escort the Crusader clear. Rendezvous at pre-set fallback coordinates.”
Buck couldn’t help a glance at Goya, whose own eyes met his with a shared glitter of misgiving. That made no sense, peeling off a heavy cruiser just to corral the wounded lighter vessel home. But the tension about his superior’s eyes warned off further response.
Fresh alarms warned of more starfighters inbound. Buck couldn’t help the snarl that worked its way across his lips as the war book identified the newcomers. “Those are Hellhounds. The Jesters are here.”
A flicker crossed Severson’s stare and Buck wondered how much hate had escaped in his voice. But the Admiral’s quivering reply made it clear the reaction was more one akin to fear. “Can they get through?”
“We’ll repel their attack, sir,” Goya said carefully, “just like the last one.”
Of course, some of them are going to get through! a part of Buck raged impotently. And we’ll get hit. That’s why it’s called battle. But we’ll give better than we get. And we’ll win.
He had an odd moment, then, and thought of his father. They’d left him fighting the war with one hand tied behind his back, these pompous, comfortable clowns in the CIC around him, while all this massed power crouched around safe worlds. Now, so very late into the game, they flung it into the vortex and quailed as it met opposite force.
Loathing filled Buck Harrison. He’d spent much of the last few weeks beyond furious at his father, for his duplicities. And there was no forgiving that. None. But he suddenly understood, even if incompletely, even if he would’ve chosen different paths, how Dad had twisted his way down such a torturous route.
Amongst these snakes, he’d had no choice.
And now Buck had no choice. As fire filled the stars around them, and inexperienced officers and crews faced that flail for the first time and shivered, he had to ride along with them.
JERRY DESCENDED THE ladder below the landing pad, one ponderous rung at a time. Josie reached the bottom below him and dropped to the catwalk with clank. He could feel her anxiety, that pressure to hurry up.
But speed wasn’t there. Each meter further dragged more, each bit of distance adding up to a weight he couldn’t explain.
Except he could.
Tina.
An image of her in pigtails flashed behind his eyes. He wasn’t totally certain when the memory had happened, only that it’d been a sunlit day on Jubilee—which they’d called home for a year or so, before the inevitable moving-on. Betty had been there, all of them a family in that light-dappled moment. And Tina flung herself into Jerry’s arms, crushing to him with the ardor of a child’s love.
Jerry reached the bottom of the ladder.
“We can double back and see if there’s another maintenance chute,” Josie was saying. “This thing’s propped against the cliff on multiple support columns, so there’s got to be another one...”
Another image fluttered through Jerry’s mind. Now there was no sun, and a squall beat against a window pane as Tina howled at him. She wasn’t a kid, anymore, but a fiery-eyed late-teenager, calling him names he’d only every used on other people. Betty sagged upon a couch with an empty stare, the wasted, drained expression of the game-stim addict that she’d become by that point. Jerry recalled real clearly what this fight had been. He’d wanted to force Betty back into therapy, but Tina said she could handle it herself.
Handle it herself...
Jerry set his forehead against a rung, felt the wind-chilled metal bite the skin. It was almost a relief. He hugged the peta-drive against his chest, wished it was a flesh and blood girl—woman—that he’d left behind many times.
Many times...
A final image blazed across the interior of Jerry’s skull. Cerelon. That final, desperate fight to get clear with the hijacked transports the Jesters needed for the rescue op on Loudon. Blaster fire lashed down a corridor. Jerry cowered on one side, in front of the entrance of a hangar—their escape route. Tina flinched back from the other, cut off, no way to get to him that didn’t involve her getting cut down. Go on, she’d told him. Leave me.
Leave me...
Jerry sagged against the ladder now, and a hoarse sob worked its way up from his chest.
“Jerry?” Josie put a hand on his back, voice tense with worry. But her tone changed, sounded of realization—of what was really hurting him. “Jerry...”
“I can’t,” he wheezed through the clenching in his throat. He swallowed once to clear it, released the ladder and turned to face her. The terror in her eyes terrified him. “I’m sorry, baby. I can’t do it. Not again. I can’t leave her.” He held out the memory drive. “Take it. Go. Save it and yourself.”
It was Josie’s turn to gulp. “Jerry, that shuttle’s already halfway to orbit.”
“There’s another one.”
She shook her head, causing a tear-jewel to shake loose and drop off the side of the catwalk. “You want to overpower its crew, fly it out after the other one, and somehow overtake it? How does that even make sense?”
“I’ll figure it out.” He stepped closer to her, forced the peta-drive at her. “Last time, I didn’t even try. This time, I’m going to at least do that.”
“Jerry” her voice shrank to a tiny squeak “they’ll kill you.”
He started with a glib retort, but the reality of what she said dried his throat. He bit his lip to control the surge of fear howling up out of his innards, then said, “There are worse things. I’ve been living with them ever since I left her on Cerelon.”
Josie’s eyes reddened, spilled tears, and her face tightened, chorded with anguish. “The mission...Jerry” she touched the peta-drive, but didn’t accept it from him “this is why we came all this way.”
He pushed it into her hand, and she took it at last. “Then you’d better get it out of here.”
She sucked in a breath, appeared to battle to seize control of her emotions. She held out her blastpistol to him. “Take it.”
He did, and pulled her arm and the rest of her into an embrace, then a kiss.
She answered, tenderly at first, then furiously, holding him to her like she’d crush him, mouth to his with passion, with anger, like she’d draw the air from his lungs, claim his life. She pulled back just as violently. “Live,” she rasped and started to back away from him. “Survive, Jerry Rodann. I’ll see you. I will.”
“You will.”
She spun and ran, cradling the memory drive-tome to her chest like a child, footsteps clanking along the catwalk and on into the distance to be swallowed by the snowy howl of the wind.
And Jerry had a moment alone, truly alone.
Death awaited.
He started back up the ladder, taking two rungs at a time, shaking the whole rickety structure with his rush. He reached the top and the dugout, wheezing for air. A quick pause to check the charge on the Street Special confirmed it still had some juice left, at least enough for a brief fight. He steadied his breathing and crept up to the dugout edge, looked out.
The second shuttle was still there, now watched by a single Guardsman, lingering off to the craft’s right and stamping his feet to stay warm as ice crystal breezes eddied about him. The trooper had his back to Jerry, but he could see the man had his visor open and face exposed, letting puffs of condensation escape mouth and nostrils. The man cradled his blastrifle at the elbows, folded at his chest, and cups his hands to his face to blow on them.
Jerry saw his chance, a quick rush, a quick blow.
“Fools, you said the palace was secure!” a voice snarled from the cave mouth on the pad’s far side.
Jerry flinched back down into the dugout, just as a clump of figures scampered out into the open. In the lead came the Methuselah, Julian, stooped as though fleeing, but straightening as long strides brought him near the shuttle. He whirled as he reached the boarding ramp—the guard left behind stiffening to hurried attention at its side. Handsome features were no longer so handsome.
“Your entire platoon will face the labor camps if that building isn’t secure in ten minutes!” Julian snarled.
“Yes, sir,” the Guardsman with officer’s markings replied with a nod.
“I ought to have you shot for risking me, Lieutenant!” Julian screeched, pointing at the man.
“Sir.”
“Now get back in there!” He gestured wildly. “The scanning team is still pinned down, for all we know!” He turned and started up the ramp. “I will await your word, here.”
The detachment turned and sprinted for the cave with haste that was likely more to escape their master than to see to their task. The trooper left to guard the shuttle watched them go uncertainly, then glanced at the shuttle, then stepped towards the ramp. After another hesitation, he started up, voice carrying over the wind, but not loudly enough for the words to be discernible.
No better time...
Jerry scuttled up out of the dugout and onto the landing pad. Lurching to his feet, he sprinted the twenty meters to the boarding ramp. His left hand shot out to catch the hydraulic retractor column and he swung himself around onto to ramp at a sprint—
—and crashed right into the Guardsman, coming back down.
Sparks blasted across Jerry’s vision as his forward-bent head cracked into the trooper’s chestplate and he rocked backwards, the opposite retractor slamming him between the shoulder blades, but keeping him from toppling. His opponent flopped onto his backside, stunned, his mouth gaping open as the impact sent his blastrifle toppling down the ramp.
Reflexively, Jerry launched forward into a kick that caught the Guardsman at the point of the jaw with a sickening clack of teeth smashing together. The man’s head snapped backwards onto the ramp, helm ringing off blastisteel plate with enough force to bounce it off again and carry his whole limp form rolling onto the belly.
“What was that?”
Jerry was hurtling up the ramp, even as Julian stepped to the top, face darkening with rage. Terror replaced that emotion, whitened his artistic features. He started to open his mouth for a scream. But Jerry’s hurtling fist cut it off in a blast of blood and snot that spun the Methuselah about, wailing in agony.
Sweeping up behind the man, Jerry wrapped his left forearm around his neck and squeezed hard. The warbling voice cut down to a wheeze as Jerry whipped him about and shoved him back up into the shuttle. With the Methuselah’s mass clenched as a shield before him, Jerry aimed the blastpistol ahead.
A pair of Guardsmen clambered to the top of the ramp and froze, fumbling to aim their blastrifles, casting uncertain glances at one another.
“Back!” Jerry barked. “Back and drop your weapons!”
“Oh my god,” Julian gasped as Jerry’s motions loosened his grip a bit. “My nose...it’s broken!”
“Drop ‘em!” Jerry shrieked at the Guardsmen as they backed away and he ascended into the shuttle hold. The pair circled away to his right, putting the gap of the ramp entry between him and them. “Drop those blasters or your boss dies and you can try explaining that!”
One of the Guards let his blastrifle fall. But the second merely cursed and tightened his grip, held the weapon at the shoulder and steadily-aimed. “No way, shithead. Drop yours!”
Jerry gulped and adjusted his grip on Julian. He’d been counting on shock and a bit of the bone-headedness he’d seen in past encounters with the Council Guard. But this one had his mask up, stubbled face bare and twisted in rage while cold, gray eyes peered back at him over the blaster’s sight.
Grinding the Street Special’s muzzle to Julian’s temple until the Methuselah whimpered, Jerry snarled, “I’m going to spray his brains all over you, buddy!”
The hatch from the forward compartment popped open—probably from the shuttle’s cockpit and a man in the drab gray overalls of a pilot shouldered out. “What the hell is—”
“Close that hatch and come down here!” Jerry snapped. “Is there anyone else at the helm?”
The pilot halted, blinking in shock, then glancing towards the Guardsmen, the second of whom had scrambled to pick his weapon back up. Then man frowned, shock dulling his comprehension. But that was coming fast, now, a hand moving slowly towards the holdout blaster holstered at his hip.
Jerry pushed the blaster hard enough against Julian’s skull to bend his whole neck into his shoulder, forced a gasp out through grinding teeth. “You are killing him,” Jerry insisted in a voice starting to warp out of his control. “All of you!”
“This isn’t going to work,” the more composed of the two Guardsmen insisted. “Just let him go and we can talk.”
Jerry let out a barking laugh. “Yeah, right!” But the last syllable squeaked out with his rising panic. This wasn’t working. Fear doused his thoughts, clouded them. He could maybe settle the matter in a frenzy of blaster fire, counting on Julian’s body as cover, but he wasn’t much of a shot.
Damn-damn-damn...didn’t think beyond just getting aboard the shuttle...
“Listen to me,” the Guardsman said slowly, “no one else has to get hurt. Just let him go and set down your—”
A blaster bolt screamed up from the ramp below and struck him in the thigh. A glancing hit, the rest of the blast ricocheted into the ceiling and blew out a light bar in a splash of sparks. One hand flying to the flames across his leg, the Guardsman shrieked and half-folded over. The motion carried him into the line of a second bolt that punched squarely through his chest and sent him toppling down onto the ramp, half aflame.
The second Guardsman fired in a panic, his cyan bolt screaming past Julian’s head and striking the wall behind them. Flecks of heat bit the back of Jerry’s neck. He shoved the squalling Methuselah to the floor and took aim with both hands. Everything seemed to slow, his finger taking forever to touch the trigger, the sights impossibly sluggish to steady on target.
